


catching up

by americanleaguer



Category: Baseball RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-08
Updated: 2010-10-08
Packaged: 2017-10-12 13:03:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 73,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/125101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/americanleaguer/pseuds/americanleaguer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This was originally a request from <a href="http://tangleofthorns.livejournal.com/">tangleofthorns at LJ</a>. She said, <i>Pudge Rodriguez has a kink for big, goofy, flame-throwing pitchers who think they're heterosexual. Tell me how he indulges it.</i> It was originally going to be a quick, fun 5-times-type fic. As you can see, it got a bit out of hand.</p><p>Conversation //in backslashes// is taking place in Spanish, between native speakers. I wasn't really sure how else to handle this, as many of the characters in this fic would naturally speak Spanish around each other, not English; this was the best solution I could come up with.</p><p>This was originally posted <a href="http://americanleaguer.livejournal.com/80537.html">here</a> on LJ; original comments can be found at the end of the epilogue.  Some small alterations have been made to this version, mostly misspellings that were not caught in the LJ version, or single word switches.  There have been no substantial changes.</p><p><b>Disclaimer:</b> This is a work of <b>fiction</b>. It is in no way a reflection on the actual life, behavior, or character of any of the people featured, and there is no connection or affiliation between this fictional story and the people or organizations it mentions. It was not written with any intent to slander or defame any of the people featured. No profit has been or ever will be made as a result of this story: it is solely for entertainment. And again, it is entirely <b>fictional</b>, i.e. <b>not true</b>.</p>
    </blockquote>





	catching up

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally a request from [tangleofthorns at LJ](http://tangleofthorns.livejournal.com/). She said, _Pudge Rodriguez has a kink for big, goofy, flame-throwing pitchers who think they're heterosexual. Tell me how he indulges it._ It was originally going to be a quick, fun 5-times-type fic. As you can see, it got a bit out of hand.
> 
> Conversation //in backslashes// is taking place in Spanish, between native speakers. I wasn't really sure how else to handle this, as many of the characters in this fic would naturally speak Spanish around each other, not English; this was the best solution I could come up with.
> 
> This was originally posted [here](http://americanleaguer.livejournal.com/80537.html) on LJ; original comments can be found at the end of the epilogue. Some small alterations have been made to this version, mostly misspellings that were not caught in the LJ version, or single word switches. There have been no substantial changes.
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** This is a work of **fiction**. It is in no way a reflection on the actual life, behavior, or character of any of the people featured, and there is no connection or affiliation between this fictional story and the people or organizations it mentions. It was not written with any intent to slander or defame any of the people featured. No profit has been or ever will be made as a result of this story: it is solely for entertainment. And again, it is entirely **fictional** , i.e. **not true**.

**1991**

The Rangers' double-A team, at the time, was called the Tulsa Drillers. It was entirely as ridiculous as it sounded, but it was also only two steps down from Texas, real baseball, and that, Pudge kept telling himself, was something that made it all worthwhile. He was on the mainland, he was getting paid to play in the pros. He had a girlfriend named Maribel who kept him mostly sane when he was off the field and nothing else stood between him and the flat, terrible, khaki-colored Tulsa-ness of it all.

Once he had made it to those minor leagues, though, it all happened very fast. One morning he was bumming around the stadium in his gimmicky Drillers hat, wondering what he would do if he broke another bat (in double-A, there were only so many bats, and after you had broken a certain number you and the team would just be shit out of luck) and that very same night he was in Comiskey Park, wearing an honest-to-god Rangers away uniform, crisp and clean and with his name across the back, with promises of as many bats as he could have ever possibly wanted.

His very first game, he threw out two runners trying to steal (they didn't know him yet, of course, didn't know what it meant for him to be behind the plate). He hit a two-run single and they got the ball for him, tossed it back into the dugout so he could keep it to remember his first big league hit, in case he never got another one. He called pitches for Kevin Brown, and then for Mike Jeffcoat. The Rangers won.

It was an anonymous Thursday in the middle of June. The start of his big league career wasn't a big deal, worthy of announcements or anything; he was just another kid catcher with a club that wanted to get a better look at him, up where it mattered. He was nineteen years old.

**

Nolan Ryan made his big league debut five years before Pudge was even _born_. By the time Pudge met him, Ryan had evolved-- or perhaps _devolved_ \-- quite a bit from the scrawny, smooth-faced teenager he had been when he first came up. Pudge had seen the old pictures. There were lines around Ryan's eyes and under his jaw now, where the skin looked looser than it had back in those black-and-white days. His hair was shaggier, less sleek, sprinkled with gray and edging backwards up his forehead.

He still wore his uniform fitted close to his body, though, his socks halfway up his calves with the stirrups cut as high as they would go, and it still looked good on him-- the old ballplayer pooch hadn't snuck up on him yet. Pudge probably weighed more than he did, even though Ryan was half a foot taller. His leg kick was as huge as it had ever been, so that at the top of his pitching motion he could tuck his nose up against his kneecap. It terrified Pudge the first time he saw it up close. Nobody pitched like that in the minors.

Of course, this was Nolan Ryan. Nobody pitched like that, period.

When Pudge got to him, Ryan had just thrown his seventh no-hitter. In Tulsa one of the clubhouse kids videotaped it while the Drillers played, and they all crowded into the humid, cramped locker room afterwards to watch it on the half-busted TV they had down there, which had a dead stripe on the left side of the screen but otherwise worked OK, so nobody bothered to replace it. There wasn't much drama in it-- they all knew the only games that got taped were perfect, or no-hitters, games that had triple plays in them or something-- but it still made Pudge's heart skip, a little bit, watching that. _Seven_ no-hitters. That was more than Sandy Koufax had thrown; that was more than _anybody_ had thrown. And here Pudge was now, expected to catch for the guy who had thrown them.

He knew, of course, in some abstract way, that Ryan threw hard. He had seen it on TV, and in ballparks; even up close once, when the Rangers brought some young prospects in to watch the veterans practice one spring. But experiencing it first-hand, literally, the ball exploding in his glove like a concentrated cannonball, _Dios_. That was something else.

He came away from his very first warm-up session with Ryan sweaty, red-faced, panting. He barely had to move his feet, only rocking backwards and forwards on his heels, shifting from the tensely coiled catching position to the more firmly based knees-in-the-dirt throwing position. Ryan had been the one doing all the work, but somehow it was Pudge whose heart was racing like he'd just run a marathon.

"You OK, kid?" Ryan asked, coming off the bare practice mound to peer down at Pudge critically.

"Sí, OK." It was kind of embarrassing; he couldn't even say that much without sounding breathless. He straightened up out of his crouch and realized, to his extreme mortification, that he barely came up to Ryan's chin, even with his helmet and cleats on.

"That little ol' fastball ain't too fast for ya, right?" Ryan teased. His voice was rough, but concerned too, like he was worried that it really _might_ be too much for a rookie. He had a Texan drawl, overwrought vowels and lazy consonants, so authentic it almost swung back around into parody.

Pudge shook his head, not trusting himself to say anything.

They got their first win together in July. Ryan struck out fourteen and seemed mostly bored by the entire process. He was nearing the end of his career and at that point, if it wasn't a no-hitter, he did not seem inclined to find it exciting. Pudge put down the signs, calling for the fastball and the slider; he had the most intimate, immediate knowledge possible of where the pitches were headed, and he still could not believe how Ryan was pitching.

Wally Joyner, batting late in the game, muttered, "Hol- _ee_ fuckballs," to himself, skipping the head of his bat desultorily in the dirt after Ryan struck him out. Pudge was happy to take that as a small comfort. At least he wasn't the only one reduced to stunned amazement.

**

He talked to Kenny Rogers sometimes. Rogers was older than him, but not so much in baseball terms-- he had only been around for a year and a bit. He had met his wife in high school, but that didn't necessarily mean anything, and he wore his pants tighter than, like, figure skaters, so Pudge figured maybe it was safe to talk. He worked up to it, of course: an off-hand remark about Juan Gonzalez's ass, the kind of thing that could have been brushed off as a joke, then a more serious comment. Then, when Rogers showed no particular signs of freaking out, a deep sigh over the fact that Gonzalez's ass was off-limits.

"More's the shame," Rogers said, deadpan. Pudge never did figure out if Rogers was actually some variety of gay, or bisexual, or if he just didn't give a fuck, not even years later when they met up again in Detroit, but it worked out the same so far as he was concerned. So long as there was at least one person he could talk to, for whatever reason, he'd be fine. It was the one thing he couldn't talk about with Maribel-- she understood a lot, about him and about baseball, but they were married now, their phone conversations revolving around American kid's TV programming and unexpected choking hazards that could be picked up by tiny hands. There were some things better left unsaid, there.

They had just lost a game to the Brewers, roasted by the unrelenting Texas heat that should have edged the advantage their way. Pudge was annoyed with himself because he had only managed one hit, a single. Rogers was annoyed with himself because he had particularly wanted to strike Robin Yount out and he hadn't managed it. Everyone was annoyed because they couldn't afford the loss, pressure starting to tamp down all around them.

The postgame spread consisted of some kind of awful semi-soggy sandwich things that Pudge could not bring himself to eat, so he ended up, without ever discussing it, at Wei Good with Rogers. Wei Good was a small, calculatedly shabby-looking Chinese restaurant in Arlington, the kind of place that was crowded with permanently sticky tabletops and chairs that looked like they had been discarded from three or four different institutional cafeterias. It was the kind of place that most ballplayers would not be caught dead in, which was a significant part of why Pudge liked it: he was unlikely to run into anyone he didn't want to run into while he was trying to eat. The food was also fairly cheap, a plus for someone who was still making the major league minimum.

"Sucked today," Rogers muttered, in between mouthfuls of something noodley. "Should be gettin' past these fuckers."

"Sí, I know." Pudge pushed his own food around his plate with a chopstick. Wei Good did not have forks, although whether this was an authenticity thing or some sort of cost-effectiveness thing was hard to say. "You pitched good, should have more wins by now. Nolan also. His ERA, what is it, three an' a bit? And the best we can get him is 4 wins. Pat'etic."

Rogers nodded. "Right, right. It's like, the way he throws, how's he lose at all?"

Pudge nodded back, thoughtfully stabbing a gooey piece of chicken. "You think he's hot?" he asked, casually as he could manage. Rogers' head snapped up. He gave Pudge a long, unreadable look, his heavy jaw frozen shut. A little bit wary, which maybe Pudge deserved. "I was jus', you know. Thinking."

"He's pretty old," Rogers said, eyes narrowed across the table. "Like, twenty years older than you. Right?"

"I guess." More like twenty-four or twenty-five years older. More than twice as old as Pudge, anyways. He twirled his chopsticks, gathering a skein of noodles up around his chicken. "Age is jus' a number, though, no? I mean, he still pitches good, he don't pitch his age." He smiled to make it a joke, because Rogers was still watching him cautiously, nervously, like Pudge was a bomb that might explode at any moment.

"He's married," Rogers said. Pudge tilted his head and stared across the table, politely not saying anything, until Rogers sighed and shook his head. "Yeah, OK, I know, so's most everyone. But I'm pretty sure he's. Not into." He gestured vaguely. "Not into. You know."

"Not into teens?" Pudge prompted. Rogers pressed his lips together and jerked his head minutely to the side. "Not into the short kid? Not into the fat kid? No? More rump for better hump, no, you don't think?" Rogers seemed to be developing a sort of facial tic. Pudge forged onwards. "Not into the Puerto Rican lovin'? Not into catchers? No? You don't think?"

Rogers' lips had gotten whiter and whiter as he pressed them together more and more tightly, his façade of disapproval growing tenser, more tightly-strung, until finally it snapped and he dropped his chopsticks, putting a hand over his face and laughing helplessly. "Oh fuck you, man, fuck."

Pudge waited for him to subside into hiccupping giggles. "I know," he said. "Not into _los hombres_." He sighed. "Who is?"

Rogers refused to rise to the bait, wiping his eyes and picking up his chopsticks again. "Girls are easier. You should know--" pointing at Pudge with a chopstick, "you went'n married one."

"Is not like dat," Pudge muttered, because it wasn't. Maribel loved him and he-- truly, honestly, sincerely-- loved her. She was sweet and practical and he could so easily see himself spending the rest of his life with her, growing old in the comfortable circle of her arms, raising a little pack of bilingual babies who would wear miniature versions of his jersey and try his catching glove on while it was still way too big for them. None of that was about _easy_.

This other thing, where he looked at guys, and sometimes did more than look, that was no different from what every other ballplayer did when they went on the road. Road sex was something all its own. The groupies and college kids and willing hangers-on, they were just another road-city diversion, like a little too much alcohol in an unfamiliar bar filled with opposing-team fans. They had nothing to do with the family you had at home.

All of which Rogers knew, of course, because he sure as hell wasn't some kind of exception to the ballplayer rule-- Pudge scowled at him. Rogers shoved more noodles into his mouth, eyebrows raised, not saying anything.

 **1993**

Dr. Conway, the team physician, was eyeing him beadily from the top of the clubhouse steps. Pudge ignored him, bending to finish snapping his shinguards into place. He could feel Conway's eyes on his back all the way out to home plate.

Things had, admittedly, been a bit heavy on the medical drama for him lately. His cheekbone had been fractured on a backswing a week ago, which was both incredibly painful (he had broken fingers and hands and even a rib, once, but he'd never broken his _face_ before) and incredibly stupid (it wasn't even his own fault). He had had surgery to stabilize it last Friday. They put little metal plates into his face, which was sort of cool. He was like some kind of robot now, or something-- cyborg, _hombre mecánico_ , whatever.

Here it was Wednesday of the next week, and he was back out on the field, with Conway tagging along, annoying the trainers. The previous day he had come out in the middle of the game with torturous dizzy spells. Not just light-headedness: the entire field had felt like it was spinning around him, the dirt beneath his cleats old oatmeal with a thin skin over it, lurching unpredictably every time he tried to move more than one step in any direction. It was hard to say if it had been the surgery itself or the pain medication that had brought it on. Conway had insisted upon bed rest, which in all fairness seemed to have done the job.

In _this_ game, though, he wasn't dizzy at all. At this point Conway was only making him nervous, which was going to make him _act_ dizzy just because he'd be thinking about it so damn much, and that was bad, because Ryan was pitching. Pudge needed his wits about him if he was going to have a prayer of catching that fastball.

The forced cold shoulder worked for the first inning; Conway gave him a very dubious once-over when he came back to the dugout, but made no move to pull Pudge from the game. When he was sure Conway had turned away to talk to someone else, he carefully pressed two fingers to his cheek. It was still a little puffy from the surgery, although the redness had gone and he was sure nobody could tell unless they were intimately familiar with what his face normally looked like. Soreness lingered long after he took the pressure of his fingers away.

He edged up to Ryan while their first trio of batters limbered up. "Ey."

"What." Ryan was annoyed; he had given up two runs in the first, although one of them had come on an error. Dean Palmer, who had bobbled the ball, was all the way down at the other end of the dugout, cowering unsubtly behind the water cooler.

"Maybe we should throw somethin' dat is not a fastball," Pudge suggested, in as mild a voice as he could muster.

"Maybe you should try not bein' such a pussy," Ryan said. He wasn't even looking at Pudge, his eyes a thousand miles away.

Pudge sighed. This was actually fairly civil for Ryan, who could wind himself up to an unbearable degree while he was pitching. Anyways, by braving the fire of Ryan's wrath and bringing it up, he had discharged his duty. If Ryan wanted to throw fastballs for the rest of the game, fine: it was still, of course, Pudge's _problem_ , but it could no longer be said that it was in any way his _fault_.

The second inning went easily enough until Alex Fernandez, the White Sox pitcher, hit Juan Gonzalez high and inside, way up on his shoulders, almost under his chin. It was probably not intentional, but Pudge, messing around with pine tar in the dugout, flinched hard anyways. Ryan was not the type of pitcher who would let that go by without making some sort of reprisal with his own arm. Pudge slowly wiped down the handle of his bat, drawing it out, nervously running over the White Sox lineup in his head. Matt Merullo, the DH, would be up first, then Robin Ventura (he glanced at third base without meaning to), then Steve Sax (another involuntary glance, out to right field this time).

Ryan wouldn't go after Merullo. He was a terrible hitter and would almost certainly make an out on his own. That left Ventura and Sax, and then Dan Pasqua, assuming one of them was put on base.

Julio Franco lined into a double play, cursing floridly as he passed Pudge on his way back to the dugout. Pudge schooled his face into careful blankness, although in truth he was frustrated; Fernandez was a good pitcher, chary with runs, and batting with empty bases arrayed in front of him, two outs already on the board, was not going to make it any easier.

He stared out at the outfield wall's broad semicircular path across the grass for a moment. There were no corners or tricky bits in Arlington, just that sweeping curve; when there was a lot of stupid bullshit going on in a game, like there was right now, the smoothly unbroken wall was a kind of calming talisman for him. Like he could reach out and run his hand over the long blue line of it.

He cut his eyes back to Fernandez, who brought his hands up together in front of his face, hiding his nose. He took a deep breath. Pudge took a deep breath. The bat balanced perfectly in his hands, so secure in his palms that he barely had to touch it with his fingers. Fernandez exploded in a flurry of arms and legs.

The curveball that resulted was hanging so fat that Pudge almost fell over in his haste to get around on it. He made contact and the ball bounced hard on the grass, a tricky grounder. For one glorious second he thought that it was going to get away from the outfielder, but Raines ran it down, and Pudge pulled up sharply past first, pushing off backwards to bounce his tailing foot back onto the base itself, as clean a single as anyone could ask for.

Of course his triumph lasted for all of a minute, which was all the time that it took for Palmer to step into the batter's box, waggle his bat importantly, and line out to deep left. Pudge closed his eyes momentarily before tipping his batting helmet off into his hands. He had hoped-- against all reason, when Palmer was involved-- that they could extend the inning, that a longer inning would give Ryan more time to let his rage simmer out. A quick glance at Ryan as Pudge tucked his helmet back into its tar-stained dugout cubby was enough to tell him that there had been absolutely no calming whatsoever.

The White Sox came up to bat. Merullo popped predictably out to center, the ball floating up into the sky lazily, dropping down slowly enough for Pudge to follow it even against the riotous colors of the crowd. Ventura stepped in, scraping at the painted lines of the batter's box with the toe of his cleat. Pudge settled into his crouch and tapped three fingers against the inside of his right thigh. Ryan shook his head, then straightened up to narrow his eyes at Pudge. Pudge knew what Ryan wanted to throw, and Ryan knew perfectly well that Pudge knew.

He sighed, and shot a single finger downwards, stabbing it towards the ground. He did not have to look up to know that Ryan would accept the call. The both of them would be living and dying by the fastball for the rest of the game, and Pudge was going to have little say in the matter. Fine. He was fine with it. Ryan was the longest-tenured veteran on the team, one of the longest-lasting players in the league; he had more than earned the right to overrule his catcher and call his own game if he liked. Fine.

The pitch came rocketing in almost faster than Pudge could follow. Even so he could see it tailing inside, and high, and although he didn't have time to actually sigh again, he managed a kind of mental sigh, and had already started shifting in that direction by the time the ball slammed into Ventura. Ventura, his own ballplayer instincts no doubt tingling, had turned into it a little, so that the ball hit him hard on the flat of a shoulder blade, instead of worryingly close to his face. There was no crunch of bone, but it still made a mildly nauseating, meaty _thud_ as it impacted Ventura's flesh.

There was, at that point, a Moment.

The entire ballpark seemed to be holding its breath. Ventura had taken one automatic step out of the box and stopped, staring at the ground, as if he was thinking. He still had his bat in his hands, although it was dangling uselessly. Pudge was half in and half out of his crouch, hamstrings complaining, torn between wanting to go after the ball and wanting to keep an eye on Ventura. Ryan was standing up straight on the mound, staring off into the middle distance to show Ventura, and by extension the entire White Sox team, exactly how much he thought of them. It was, briefly, quiet.

Ventura dropped the bat. As soon it had got clear of his hands he reached up and tore the helmet off his head, throwing it aside and changing direction, charging out towards the mound. Ryan immediately shed his glove and stepped slightly to the side as Ventura made the mistake of going in low to knock Ryan off balance.

Instead of obligingly falling over, Ryan grabbed Ventura around the neck and started punching him vigorously in the head. Pudge raced up from behind, trying to grab Ventura by the waist and pull him away. Protecting his pitcher from any and all rogue batting elements was an expected part of his job, but he was not at all sure that it was Ryan who needed protecting. Ventura was 25 and in the brawny prime of health. Ryan was 46, old enough to be balding, for God's sake, but Ventura was utterly helpless in Ryan's grip, and all Pudge could think was that Ryan might actually kill Ventura, break his neck or crack his skull or something, and he had to get Ventura out of there before irreparable damage was done. Which was crazy-- when was the last time someone had actually died on a baseball field?-- but with Ryan's fist slamming into Ventura's head over and over again, his arm already nice and loosened-up by all those damn fastballs, it did not seem so very impossible.

He kept getting shoved around, side to side, back and forth, but with all of his attention focused on Ventura and Ryan, it took Pudge a little bit to realize that the shouting was not just coming from the two main combatants, that an awful lot of other people had spilled out onto the field, pressed in around him. Some of them were trying to pull on Ryan, some were trying to pull on Ventura, some were trying to pull on Pudge himself. He gave up on extricating Ventura from the now-roiling mass of ballplayers and concentrated on just staying upright for a while. He got occasional glimpses of Ryan, enough to confirm that he was still basically unharmed and that Pudge, thus, had not entirely fallen down on the job.

Somebody elbowed him in the face, right on top of his recently-reconstructed cheekbone. Everything went pain-haze-gray for an indeterminate amount of time. It was almost an amazing level of pain, enough to make it seem like his brain had unhooked itself from reality; it did not seem possible that he was still, somewhere in the world, up on his feet and conscious, although that was apparently the case.

The umpires managed to get everyone calm again (their shouting vague to Pudge's ears, like they were trying to yell at him while he was twenty feet underwater) and he was vaguely aware that he was back behind the plate, going through the automatic motions of catching, throwing, standing at the plate when Coach Kennedy planted a hand in the middle of his ass and shoved him out of the dugout. The next time he was really aware of things again, he was flat on his back in the trainer's room, staring up at the ceiling, where Conway had taped a third-grade-level poster of the food pyramid.

 _Make whole grains the base of your nutrition plan today!_

Ryan was hovering off to the side, at the edges of Pudge's peripheral vision. "Sorry," he said. He was shifting rapidly from foot to foot, some kind of dire excess of energy.

Pudge considered. He seemed to be having trouble thinking clearly. It was not impossible that he had a concussion. "We win?"

Ryan moved closer to the padded trainer's table, nodded where Pudge could see. "Um. Five t'two. Are you, uh, ok?"

"Sí," Pudge said, then stopped, surprised, because it was more or less true. He wasn't really in pain anymore, although by rights his much-abused cheekbone ought to have been throbbing. Conway must have pumped him full of some industrial-grade painkiller, which would also explain a number of other things, such as the interesting way the room seemed to be warping.

"Doc said you…" Ryan trailed off, maybe thinking better of telling Pudge whatever Conway had said. "Anyway. Sorry, it's… kinda my fault. I forgot you had the…" Ryan waved a hand over his own cheek, and his tone turned faintly chiding. "You shouldn'ta come int'a knockdown fight like that."

"I'm the catcher," Pudge said. "He rush you. Canno' let him jus…"

"I can take care'a myself out there," Ryan interrupted, "'specially when it comes to little wanna-be punks like Robbie V." He put a hand on Pudge's shoulder, squeezed. "But thanks, kid."

As a gesture, this meant nothing. Actually, it meant a lot of things-- the brotherhood of team, the aged veteran passing approval to the kid still wetting his feet in the league, that hypermasculine middle-American jock habit of expressing complex emotions through wildly inadequate physical gestures with which Pudge had become sadly familiar-- but the kinds of things it indicated were so utterly common in baseball that they did not normally need to be remarked upon.

But Pudge had had a long week, and an even longer day. He had managed to catch most of a nearly three hour baseball game while the world splintered and reformed, distorted by pain. He had been flooded with fight-or-flight adrenaline, probably the only thing that had kept him upright, and now he was drugged out of his mind, doctor's orders. Whatever senses of self-preservation and restraint he usually had were dulled down to nothingness.

Out of this chemical and mental fog came Ryan's hand.

What Pudge should have done, when Ryan patted him on the shoulder, was nod manfully, make a sort of expressive grimace. Something like that. He knew how it went; he had been in the game in one way or another for years, with Maribel for many of them. He was familiar with the rules of the game, on and off the field, both written and unwritten. He knew how to toe the line, stay within the silent bounds.

Instead he closed his eyes, sighed deeply, and put his own hand over Ryan's. "Drive me home," he said. "Don't t'ink I should make to drive myself."

There was silence for a moment, but then the hand on his shoulder squeezed again. "Sure, kid," Ryan said.

**

The sight of Ryan walking into his apartment was a deeply strange one. He resisted the urge to look furtively up and down the street; there was nothing wrong with having a friend over, even if it was a teammate, even if it was a veteran who normally wouldn't have much to do with him, even if it was a superstar surefire Hall of Famer and Pudge still just a couple years out of raw rookiehood.

"Where's your wife?" Ryan asked, looking around. "You're married, right?"

Pudge busied himself with the apartment door. It got kind of sticky sometimes, and the latch wouldn't take properly when he closed it unless he jiggered it just so. "Miami."

"Miami?"

"All her friends, they are in Miami, you know? Closer to Puerto Rico. It makes her, uh, more happy, to be down there." He finally got the door closed and turned to look at Ryan, who seemed enormous in the relatively small space, larger than the life Pudge was used to having in his home, and still jittering slightly with post-brawl animation.

"Thanks for the ride," Pudge said. He walked up to Ryan with the intention of, he didn't even know, maybe offering him a drink, something innocuous, but his filters were all shot to hell. He kept going, right into Ryan's space, until he was close enough to stretch up on his toes and kiss Ryan right on the mouth.

Or the lower lip and some of his chin. Ryan was a lot taller, there was only so much he could do.

Ryan went stiff immediately. Pudge could almost see that good solid Texan upbringing zinging along Ryan's veins, spreading out from his lips to freeze the rest of his body in a shatter-sharp crystalline structure of fear and manly disgust and religious horror.

Under normal circumstances this would have been enough to strike Pudge down like every godly thunderbolt from On High that Ryan must have been imagining at that very moment. But it was already August. The season was winding down. Ryan had announced that he was retiring after this year anyways. And Pudge was, at that moment, as high as Bill Lee after an all-night bender. Fuck it. _Fuck it_ : he got both hands on Ryan's shoulders so that he could lever himself up a little bit, tease at Ryan's lips with his tongue.

Ryan stiffened further, spine straightening him away from Pudge. His shoulders flexed, the only warning Pudge had before Ryan forced his hands up to Pudge's chest and shoved him into the nearest wall, not as hard as he possibly could, but pretty damn hard. Pudge let his shoulders take the brunt of it, keeping the muscles of his neck controlled so that the back of his head thunked into the wall with a dull boom instead of a dangerous crack. It still sent enough energy ringing into his skull to make the pain in his cheek flare up again, but he was only aware of that in a distant, how-about-that sort of way. He would have to remember to ask Conway about that drug.

"What the _fuck_ ," Ryan hissed. "What the… what the _fuck_ , kid?" He pulled Pudge away from the wall a little bit just so that he could slam him back into it again.

Pudge tipped his head back, let his eyes fall closed. The wall felt gritty under his hair, like some of the plaster had been knocked loose. His cheek was definitely offering up some complaints, but the painkiller was a buffer, allowing him to ignore it for the time being. More important was the itchy, restless feeling in his hands-- he wanted to touch Ryan right now. Yes.

He thought hard for a moment and eventually his right hand rose, flattened itself against Ryan's stomach. Ryan made a stiffly suppressed gasping sound. He slid his hand up to Ryan's chest. Ryan had quite good muscle tone for a guy in his mid-40s, and he was displaying it to good effect, holding Pudge against the wall like this.

"Are… you… brain damaged? Did… did somethin' happen in the fight?" Ryan's voice sounded kind of mangled. That good Texan upbringing must have been wreaking all kinds of havoc in his system, which would of course not be prepared to deal with these types of inputs. He couldn't seriously beat Pudge up-- who would catch the rest of the season? So he was going into a kind of sexually horrified shock, maybe.

"I'm serious, kid, are you… what are you doin'?" Ryan did not squeak, but his vocal chords were definitely toying with the higher registers. Pudge rubbed one of his thumbs in circles, pressing into Ryan's chest.

He really wanted to say something like, _Isn't it obvious? Let's fuck._ But even now, with everything groovy-good, riding this accommodating swell of painkillers, he knew that that was a very bad idea. _Let's fuck_ was probably the worst thing he could say-- it would send Ryan into a terminal panic-- there was just no way his mind could handle it. Pudge had already fucked things up in a way that was probably going to mortify and appall him tomorrow, but he still knew that much.

"Scared?" he murmured, letting whatever shredded remnants of instincts he had left guide him into taking a different tack. Ryan gave his shoulders a renewed push, as if to say, _You think I'm scared?_ Pudge arched his back against the wall, catlike. "Is not so scary, honest."

"This ain't… I… I'm happily fuckin' married," Ryan hissed. "And I ain't some… some one like that."

"So also, we all." Pudge paused, lining up the words in his mind. "So. What? Because we are not on the road?"

Ryan took this like a fastball to the face, blinking, fast-action dazed. He stepped back, hands falling limply down to his sides. Pudge came down off his toes and rolled his shoulders cautiously, feeling the sockets pop. Ryan stared at him. Pudge, not knowing what else to do, stared back.

"This is just… normal? For you?" Ryan was staring pretty intently. Pudge nodded slowly and carefully, partly to make sure Ryan could see every dip of his head and partly because his neck felt funny from being snapped into the wall. "It's just, like… like fuckin' groupies on the road?"

"Sure, yes. What else would it be like?"

"I dunno. I don't know shit 'bout… your kind." Pudge rolled his eyes. Ryan folded his arms over his chest and thrust out his chin awkwardly. "Well. It's a sin, kid, it's 'gainst the Bible."

"So is _adulterio_ ," Pudge shot back. " _Engaño_. Cheating. Covet somebody else's girl. Dat stop you? Dat stop anybody when we go on road an' there's ten girls who wan' to fight over a lap of one ballplayer in the bar? Anyway," he added, while Ryan slowly turned red, " _adulterio_ is a part of 10 commandments, a big one. Compare to dat, what I do, is no big deal, hardly a note."

"What." Ryan stopped. He looked vaguely queasy, although it was impossible for Pudge to tell if he was queasily panicked or queasily curious. "What. You… do?"

Pudge stepped forward, getting back into Ryan's space again. He reached up, very deliberate, and draped a hand over the back of Ryan's neck. "Lean down, _por favor_. Some of us are short."

Ryan snorted, then looked surprised, as if amazed that he could laugh in the midst of all this heinous sin. After a few distinctly agonizing seconds, he leaned down. Pudge met him halfway, up on his toes again, and kissed him full on the lips, pressing with his tongue even though Ryan's mouth was remaining chastely closed.

After another few seconds Ryan slammed him into the wall again.

There was no warning, no way for him to stop the base of his skull from cracking into the wall this time, but Ryan followed him the whole way in, kissing him ferociously. There wasn't even room for his head to bounce back on the rebound. A white-noise ringing filled his ears and Pudge found himself wondering, stunned and dim, how much damage was being done to his head today, how bad it would be when the drugs finally wore off. Was he concussed yet? Had his cheekbone re-fractured? Maybe one of the little metal plates had jarred loose, trailing jagged along the bone beneath it, or maybe his brain had racked up against the interior of his skull and was swelling now, pressure building at the back of his face.

It was, however, rather difficult to get too worked up about it when Nolan Ryan was sucking Pudge's tongue into his own mouth, trembling tensely against Pudge's body.

There was an old saying, _Árbol que nace torcido, jamás su tronco endereza_. A tree that is born twisted can never grow straight. He had heard an Americanized version of it in the minor leagues, mostly from younger coaches, winking at one another behind the backs of the more grizzled vets. _You can't teach an old ballplayer new tricks_. A good saying. Very true when it came to baseball, where almost as a rule things were done the same way they had always been done.

"Let me," he gasped, although it came out more like " _et ee_ ," fighting against Ryan's mouth. Ryan backed up, hands still on Pudge's shoulders, face flushed red all the way up to his much-receded hairline. Pudge made a careful shift sideways, keeping a close eye on Ryan, just in case. But Ryan got it right away, stepping back again so that Pudge could move away from the wall, turning to put his own back to the wall when Pudge touched his hip lightly, the kind of touch he'd use to slow a pitcher down on the mound. Ryan still looked pretty wild around the eyes, and he flattened his palms against the wall at his sides like he was afraid of what he might do if he let them float around freely, but he was there, not cringing away from Pudge or posturing aggressively or doing any of the other things he was probably normally inclined to do.

So it _was_ possible to teach new tricks to old ballplayers, at least sometimes. Maybe the key was to involve erections.

Pudge dropped down easily, automatically shifting on the balls of his feet for balance. Ryan visibly relaxed, peeled a hand off of the wall and rested it on the top of Pudge's head. Pudge reached for his belt.

In his catcher's crouch at the feet of his pitcher. That was right; it was how things were supposed to be ordered in the world. It had to be some small part of why Ryan was now allowing this, was OK for some heavily relativized version of OK. Pudge was meant to fold at the knees and do any number of things in the service of men towering high over him, throwing him fastball after fastball and sometimes a curve.

Ryan tasted faintly of the hypoallergenic scent-free bulk-ordered soap they all used in the clubhouse showers after a game. Hard, he was a little bigger than Pudge had been expecting, but that was fine so long as he kept his jaw slack, angled his head so that when Ryan's cock pressed itself up against the inside of his cheek, it did so on the side that hadn't recently been riveted back together. He had a wide mouth anyways, and plenty of determination to make this work.

"Shit," Ryan said. The hand on Pudge's head flexed, setting off fascinating cascades of radiating sensation bordering on pain-- sensations that _would_ be pain soon enough. "Sheeeee- _it_." Ryan gasped, then made a kind of choked-off grunting sound and pushed his cock almost to the limit of Pudge's gag reflex.

Pudge twitched, nearly falling out of his crouch, reflexes saving him at the last second. Ryan was swearing steadily now under his breath, his hand flexing rhythmically, the muscles of his abdomen jumping, twitching the cock in Pudge's mouth. _He_ was making Ryan swear like that. He was responsible for the light tremble in Ryan's thighs, so close to his face. The wetter he made his mouth, the more he dragged his tongue around, the harder Ryan shook, the more fluid his swearing became. It was nearly as good as getting a blowjob himself.

Lucidity crept up on him, a definite mixed blessing. As sensations became clearer-- the bitter soap-salt taste of Ryan on the back of his tongue, the heat of the base of Ryan's cock where he had wrapped a hand for balance, the embarrassingly hot sensation of spit slicking his lips and chin-- he got more and more turned on, his own cock straining hopefully against his pants. But at the same time the sensations of pain were growing stronger. His cheek ached, a droning hum of soreness punctuated with sharp spikes of bright agony that penetrated all the way to the back of his skull. His eyes hurt in their sockets, the lids feeling paper-thin, overstretched.

Just when he was starting to think that he couldn't take much more, that he was going to have to stop and pull off, let his swimming head clear, maybe lie down on the floor and die for a few minutes, Ryan swore with particular vehemence, grabbed the sides of Pudge's head with both hands, and came down the back of his throat. He teetered there for a couple of long seconds, hips making tiny helpless aftershock twitches, then thrust Pudge's head away from him so fast that Pudge tumbled backwards onto the carpet, coughing gratefully.

Ryan slid down the wall and covered his face with his hands. Pudge rolled over onto his stomach and dedicated some time to coughing-- not too rapid-fire, because that would probably lead to him throwing up, but slowly and steadily, methodical.

When he could mostly breathe again he rolled over onto his back, eyes open to the ceiling. He did not think that he could stand up even if he wanted to. He could see Ryan out of the corner of his eye; Ryan still had both hands over his face, his knees up, his softening cock hanging out of his pants like an afterthought. Pudge had no idea what was going on in his mind. Maybe nothing was going on. Maybe Ryan always looked like that after getting off.

His own cock was anything but soft, positively throbbing now, almost as painful as the racket going on between his ears. He let his eyes drop closed, brought up the still-fresh image of Ryan's face twisting with pleasure and surprise as he came, and eased a hand into his own pants.

**

Take Your Kid to Work Day was near the end of the season. He let Maribel know well in advance, giving her plenty of time to prepare the usual mass of child-care equipment for transit. He cleaned the apartment obsessively the week before she was due to fly up, vacuuming every surface he could find and baby-proofing off a list he had paid the clubhouse kid to copy out of a book from the library: electrical sockets stopped up with plastic covers, low corners rounded off with rubbery bumpers, poison-bearing cabinets securely locked.

//He didn't cry at all on the flight over,// Maribel said, bouncing Dereck on her hip as she walked in the door, a brace of brightly colored bags balanced precariously on her other shoulder. //The flight attendants all loved him.//

//Oh yeah?// Pudge carefully scooped Dereck up to his own chest, supporting his butt, which was squishy with diapering. Dereck was a little over a year old, chubby and cheerful. He had just recently learned how to recognize Pudge on TV and according to regular reports from Maribel was consequently giving his burgeoning language skills a workout, yelling _papa!_ at the screen for the first few innings, before he invariably fell asleep.

Pudge thumbed Dereck's nose and smiled at the resulting burble. Dereck had a more snub version of his own nose, with his wide-set eyes and broad mouth, instantly recognizable even through the roundness of babyfat.

Maribel leaned into him, reaching up to rub Dereck's back. //It's so nice to have my boys back together.//

//Mmm. I'll be back down in Miami as soon as the season's over.// Which was true, and he was looking forward to it. He spent altogether too much time away from Dereck during the season, with all his home games in Texas and Maribel preferring to spend as much time as possible in the National League territory of south Florida. Not that he begrudged her that; she would have been miserable in Arlington. He wrapped his free arm around her waist. She grinned, and kissed him on the cheek.

**

The baseball diamond in Arlington was filled with very small white home jerseys, rising only a couple of feet above the ground. A casual observer would see three or four Palmeiros standing together, a large Henke running after a small Henke, a couple of young Francos instructing an even younger Rogers in the finer points of bare-handed catch.

Dereck was not doing a whole lot of walking yet, but he could crawl deceptively fast, so it was in Pudge's best interests to keep him occupied. He managed this by sitting on the infield grass and rolling a soft kiddie ball, printed with fake stitches, across to Dereck, who would either roll it back or try to put it in his mouth. Maribel stood off to the side, chatting in Spanish with Elaine Gonzalez, who was married to Juan and had some complicated array of additional athletic connections of her own: she was a professional field hockey player, or a volleyball player, something like that, and she was also the sister of Javy Lopez, who was some rookie catcher over on the Braves.

Maribel was wearing one of Pudge's jerseys, blousy over her still-nursing-swollen chest, and shorts. Pudge kept glancing over at her, his eyes getting caught on the solid strength of her bare legs, making him light-headed every time he remembered that he had the good fortune to be married to this amazing woman. Still only 21, and he already had a wife and kid padding around the stadium wearing his number seven on their backs.

Two of Ryan's kids were with him, both already fully as tall as Ryan himself. He made a few efforts to go over and talk, introduce Dereck, something, but every time he managed to make his way over to wherever Ryan had been, Ryan had already left. Pudge saw him hardly at all for the first part of the day, when the older kids took batting practice and the younger ones amused themselves with puffy toy bats and more soft balls like the one Dereck had slobbered all over. The sun hiked itself up the sky and arced off the bleachers, blindingly bright.

Around noon they all trooped into the clubhouse for lunch; the food would not last very long if left outside in the Texan heat. Maribel emerged from the crowd of wives and girlfriends around the extra folding tables that had been shoehorned into the clubhouse for the event, extracted Dereck from Pudge's arms, and spirited him away to be cooed over by women in two different languages.

"Hey," Rogers said, sidling up to Pudge and handing him a paper-wrapped sandwich.

"You see Ryan aroun'?" he asked, taking the sandwich and unwrapping it gratefully. Rogers narrowed his eyes incredulously. "Not like dat! I mean, I jus' didn' see him much today, but his wife, his sons, they are here, he must be here somewhere, no?"

Rogers glanced around, studiously casual. "I met his kids, yeah. You know the oldest one, Reid, he's right around your age."

Pudge winced. "No. Serious?"

"Mmhm. You're, what? When's your birthday?"

" _Noviembre_. I'm 21, you know dat."

"Aw, you kiddin'?" Rogers made a sympathetic little grimace. "You're like exactly the same age as his kid, man. Like. _Exactly_. He's 21 and I'm pretty sure he was born in November. He's been at some damn prep school and he's gonna pitch for a college team next year."

" _Madre de Dios_ ," Pudge muttered. He put a hand over his face, just pressing into his eyeballs for a few seconds.

"Well, it ain't like you actually did anything, right?" Rogers asked. When Pudge did not say anything, just dropped his hand down and stared at the floor, Rogers groaned. "Oh no you did not. Aw, _man_. C'mon." He grabbed Pudge's arm and dragged him through the crowd, muttering a trailing string of excuse-mes until they burst out into the relative quiet of the bathroom. Rogers dragged him into the showers, which were dry and, for once, clean.

"You had sex with a guy _literally_ old enough to be your dad?"

"We didn' have sex," Pudge muttered. Both of Rogers' eyebrows shot up. "We didn'! We jus'… I jus'…" He waved the hand holding the sandwich vaguely, hesitated, then took a big bite, chewed deliberately, and swallowed. He wiped his lips pointedly.

Rogers sighed, the air going out of him like a slowly deflating car tire. He propped a shoulder up against the tiled wall. "That's a _kinda_ sex. And now everyone's got the wives here, and your kid's here, and his kids… man. That's… I don't think they've invented a word for how awkward that is. No wonder he's avoidin' you today."

"You think he is try to avoid me?"

Rogers looked away. Pudge shoved the rest of the sandwich into his mouth and fiddled with the top button of his jersey, slumping a little against the wall, feet planted so that his back wouldn't skid down it.

It was easy to forget how old Ryan was, in the middle of the season. He was a veteran, of course, but there were a number of veterans on the team. He didn't _look_ that much older than, say, Julio Franco, who had just recently shaved all his hair off so that his hairline would no longer be an issue. He was still spry enough to beat up Robin Ventura when Robin Ventura required beating up.

Ryan wasn't the first vet to fuck around with someone much younger than him, and Pudge wasn't the first kid to fuck around with someone much older than him, but usually that meant groupies, not other ballplayers. There weren't any complications involved in fucking groupies. Other ballplayers… that was nothing _but_ complications, apparently. He could practically feel the sympathy and disapproval radiating off of Rogers, although Rogers was visibly doing his best to master both.

"Look," Rogers said, his voice blustery, echoing off the tiles. "I ain't gonna say it's not so bad. But… it could be worse? You just… you just gotta get through the rest'a this season, and there ain't too much left." Pudge nodded, looking down, a rush of stupid affection for Rogers sneaking up on him so that he had to blink rapidly to hold back embarrassed and embarrassing tears.

"'Least you know he won't bring it up," Rogers added. "Not with everyone here. Shit, that's the last thing good ol' Nolan Ryan would do."

"What's the last thing I would do?" Ryan asked quietly.

Pudge snapped upright, the sandwich doing a barrel roll in his stomach. Rogers yelped and skidded on the tile floor, flailing for several seconds before sliding gracelessly to the ground. Ryan was standing at the open spot where the shower tiles gave way to the rest of the bathroom, arms folded, face perfectly blank.

There was the sound of a door opening, the happy normal noise of the rest of the team and their families briefly spilling into the bathroom as someone else came in. "Get out," Ryan said, in that same quiet, even voice, without looking around. Someone Pudge could not see made a few confused noises, but the door opened and closed again as whoever it was obviously backed back out of the room.

Ryan cut his eyes down to where Rogers crouched uncertainly on the floor. "You too." Rogers opened his mouth to protest and Ryan's shoulders tensed with implied menace. " _Out_." Rogers cast a sideways glance at Pudge, all nerves and defiance, but Pudge shook his head minutely, _not worth it, not when he gets like this_. He stood in stiff silence while Rogers levered himself up from the floor, giving Pudge one more glance, apologetic this time, before shuffling out of the showers. He gave Ryan as wide a berth as he could on his way out.

"So you. You." Ryan inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring in a way that sparked instinctually dangerous in Pudge's mind. "You talk to him. About, what? Everything?"

Pudge tried to look Ryan in the eye and found that he could not; he settled for looking at Ryan's chest instead. "You don' gotta worry. He's, Kenny's OK. He don' care."

"I care. You have no right…" Ryan stopped, flexed his hands. His footsteps echoed faintly as he walked over to Pudge, who stiffened even further. "You got no right to talk about that… that. With anyone. I can't believe you…"

"He is my friend." Pudge drew himself up; not that it made much difference, standing in front of Ryan, but it made him feel a little bit better. "I talk to my friend about stuff dat happen in my life, OK, it is my _every_ right. And like I say, Kenny don' care, he is not gonna tell nobody, and I don' tell him the detail anyway, OK, is not like he know dat you--" He pulled up short, silenced by the look that had crept over Ryan's face, which was somewhere between _about to faint_ and _about to commit murder_.

There was silence while Ryan's face went from white to red and back again, his mouth twitching on a thousand things he was trying to not say. Eventually he leaned in towards Pudge, whose heart rate ratcheted up in excitement, but Ryan was only getting close so that he could speak quietly without his voice being projected all over the bathroom.

"You ain't a rookie anymore."

"I know dat, you think I don' know dat? Dat was years ago, I know how things are now--"

"You can't, no, OK, you can't keep doin' this…. this kinda shit. You can't keep actin' like a kid anymore--"

"Hey! I am 21 years old, I am not act like a kid--"

"Stop, stop, _stop!_ " Ryan shouted, then froze, eyes swiveling towards the open end of the showers. They both stood still for a moment, breath held fast, waiting to see if anyone had heard.

"Is… is prob'ly pretty noisy out dere, wit' everyone all close in," Pudge offered quietly. Stupid, mentioning his age out loud, _estúpido, estúpido_ , just dangling it right in front of Ryan's face, Pudge and his son the same damn age. Fucking _stupid_. "Nobody hear--"

"Shut up," Ryan hissed. He looked unhinged, unpredictable lines around his eyes, lips trembling. "Just… just shut the fuck up." He took a deep, shaky breath, then straightened, smoothing a hand down the front of his shirt. It was a plain white button-down shirt, tucked into his jeans. Pudge helplessly noticed that he looked good in it.

"I was out of it. OK. On account of the brawl. And trainer gave me some shit so my hand wouldn't swell up. Who knows what that shit does to your head. And you, you were even worse, you didn't hardly know what was goin' on by then. It was stupid and, and, and a mistake, a disgustin' mistake, and it never would've happened if we'd both been in our right minds, so. So it may as well've never done." He narrowed his eyes at Pudge and balled up his fists, leaning his knuckles against the shower wall on either side of Pudge's head, daring him to contradict anything he had just said. "I'm gonna do my damn best to forget all about it, and you, you… you damn fuckin' well better do the same."

"You think I can jus' forget, jus' like dat? Maybe for you, you can, but for me? Is my life." Ryan was starting to look truly alarming again. "Not you! That is not how I mean it. I don'… I don' want anythin' from you," Pudge said, although that was not strictly true. If Ryan agreed to it, he would have jumped him right here in the showers, where anyone could walk in on them. He would have gone down to his knees again in a second.

But Ryan was, right now, as far away from welcoming that sort of thing as a person possibly could be. Maybe for him it _had_ only been about the brawl, the adrenaline, the intoxicating rush of power that he must have felt as he secured Ventura under his arm and knew that he had the ability to win this thing.

"I cannot jus' turn off the brain, make what happen go away," Pudge said, trying to put finality, firmness, something into the words. "Even if I could make history to change, and I cannot, is not like dis is what I would erase. For me, dis is not jus', jus', a blip. A mistake pitch, no, OK. Dis is part of how things are always, for me."

Ryan made a disgusted noise, deep down in his throat, turned his head sharply to the side, like he couldn't even stand to look at Pudge. He pushed off from the wall with both hands at once, a smooth motion, powered by shoulders that could muscle a baseball through the strike zone from just over sixty feet away. A faint, deeply inappropriate stirring twisted in the pit of Pudge's stomach; he knew that power, knew it up close and personal as only a catcher could.

"I'm already forgettin' just as fast as I can," Ryan said. The crazed rage was bleaching out of his eyes and a kind of blank deadness was moving in, much more frightening. Rage he could handle, rage he had seen from Ryan any number of times. But this he had never seen before, on the pitcher's mound or off of it. "That's how it is for _me_. This ain't… it wasn't me. I ain't. Like that. And I don't care how it is for you. From now on I don't give half a shit 'bout how it is for you."

He turned and walked out of the showers. Pudge was still frozen, back stiff against the wall, palms flat, pressed just above the shower knobs on either side. His mind had gone blank. A showerhead somewhere had started to drip slowly, each drop hitting the tile with deliberate crispness. He heard each watery plink as a separate entity, a little parcel of time. The reality of everything else was awfully suspect..

Ryan stopped at the edge of the tile, silhouetted against the white walls of the rest of the bathroom. His voice came carrying back as if it were traveling down a long, dimly lit tunnel. "If you ever, ever… _ever_ talk about it to anyone else…"

He trailed off, but that was fine. Ryan was going to the Hall of Fame. He was a living legend, kids basing their entire careers on his style, imitating his pitching motion in Little League and high school and college and the minors. There were things he felt he could have associated with his name, and things that he felt he could not. Pudge was not so young that, even through the dense white noise crashing around the confines of his skull, he could pretend he didn't know exactly what Ryan meant.

On the mound, a pitcher would not ignore his catcher. It was impossible. The catcher was half the equation, hands soft and open to receive whatever the pitcher was throwing. There was always a sort of rawness between a pitcher and a catcher, much more so than between other players, because no two other players on a team had such a direct baseball relationship.

Pudge had never been a non-entity to one of his pitchers. He would not have thought it was possible. None of them had ever looked at him like he was a clear pane of glass and all they could see was the wall behind, the way Ryan would look at him for the rest of the season. It did not so much break his heart as wrench free some firm conviction he had had in the configuration of the world.

The tiled wall at his back had been the only thing still holding him upright. He had stayed there for a while, looking towards the end of the showers, waiting for Ryan to come back, make eye contact, tell him it had all been a terrible misunderstanding, that he hadn't meant what he had said. But Ryan had not come back.

 **1994**

Some catchers were dedicated believers in extensive pregame preparation: scouting reports, videos, obsessively going over the lineup with the starter hours and sometimes days before the game. These were studious, serious catchers, the kinds of catchers who always had little notebooks jammed in their back pockets. People talked about the managing careers of these catchers in terms of _when_ , not _if_.

Pudge had never been that type of catcher. Quality video and in-depth scouting reports were in short supply in the Puerto Rican system, and he had grown up quite happily without them. Some of these American catchers had been getting scouting reports on opposing players in _grade school_. Pudge was lucky, he knew, certainly luckier than many of the other players who had come from less stable countries; his parents had been able to come down to the fields to watch him play more often than not, and he'd had well-established school teams, but even in Puerto Rico nobody's father had the time to work up a scouting report on somebody else's eight year old.

Above and beyond that, he simply did not believe spending that much time on a game, before the game even started, did all that much good. You had to know something basic about each guy-- this second baseman liked high fastballs, that center fielder had a hole in his swing outside and away-- but things changed when the game was actually being played. You could come in with the most carefully drawn-up plan of action and then find out that your pitcher was hungover, or the winds were wrong, or he just couldn't throw his curveball for shit that day. And then what?

Spending four hours before the game going over statistics with his pitcher, often struggling to make his accent understood, sometimes even with other Latino players who had trouble with his Puerto Rican-tinged Spanish, might have _endeared him to managers_ , but it wouldn't really help him _win ballgames_.

All of which went to explain why he did not talk things over with Rogers before his late July start against the Angels. He knew the Angels' lineup, Rogers knew the Angels' lineup; so far as he was concerned, there was little reason to discuss much of anything before the game. Telling Rogers for the millionth time how to best approach Bo Jackson would have been insulting to the both of them.

It was a nice night for baseball. The sky was clear, the grass in good shape, the nighttime air an unusually low 80 dry degrees. There was a big crowd on hand, well over 40,000, probably coaxed out on the weeknight because of the weather. When Rogers felt good, his pitches looked like they were coming out of his hand with no effort at all, and tonight it barely looked like he was in a game, throwing as free as he would in a casual side session. A game of catch. Nothing to it.

Pudge led off the third with a home run deep down the left field line, a crushing blow that gave back a solid shock, almost pleasurable, down the handle of his bat. Jose Canseco, who was batting behind him, hit another home run to left. Back to back, and that was Canseco's second homer of the game; he'd hit yet another ball to left in the bottom of the first. Andrew Lorraine, who was pitching for the Angels, looked like he was about to have a nervous breakdown on the mound.

Aside from that the game was fairly unremarkable-- maybe a little fast-paced, the innings seeming to whir by with very slightly unusual alacrity. But he did not really notice anything out of the ordinary until he was hastily refastening his shinguards after the bottom of the fifth and Dean Palmer slid onto the bench next to him.

"Man," Palmer said, "every time they hit a ball that looks like it's headin' over to third, I feel like I'm gonna throw up." He shook his head and wiped the back of his throwing hand across his forehead. He was clammy with sweat, wanly pale where he wasn't ruddy with exertion.

Pudge frowned. Why Palmer would tell _him_ this, instead of the trainer, was beyond his understanding. "You sick or somethin'?"

Palmer shot him a wide-eyed look, then glanced around furtively, jerked his chin towards centerfield. "Scoreboard, man."

Pudge looked. It was four to nothing, he already knew that, nothing special, four-to-nothing was a wholly unremarkable score… then he froze. He raked his eyes over the line of numbers there, then back again.

Zero. Zeroes after zeroes up on the scoreboard. The Angels had no runs, but they also had no hits.

Come to think of it, there had been no errors either. And Rogers had not issued any walks, he knew that for sure. Rogers had been living squarely in the strike zone all day, and with Ed Bean umpiring behind the plate, they had been getting all the calls. He had been taking it for granted, just a typical good day, but.

A perfect game. It was a perfect game, at least for now, and Rogers had not thrown that many pitches, and they were going into the sixth inning, so the game was already more than half over, and this could be, they could, he could catch this thing. Rogers could throw it, and he could catch it, and it could really happen, right here in this game. The possibility of it took his breath away, leaving him gaping at the scoreboard.

Palmer gestured mutely out at the board, _see, didn't I tell you_? Pudge shut his mouth with a conscious effort. He had played in thousands of baseball games before this, in big league parks and homemade sandlots and everything in between, but right now… this was something entirely new.

**

You did not sit next to the pitcher during a perfect game, and you did not talk to him. It was baseball tradition, one of those mildly irrational customs so universally obeyed that it may as well have been signed into law by the commissioner. But Rogers looked like he was about to lose his mind, sitting there by himself, and Pudge could not stand it. If Rogers did not drive himself crazy, Pudge was going to go crazy on his own with worry. It had nothing to do with being a catcher-- someone who was after all just as subject to the whims of baseball superstition as any other player in the dugout-- and everything to do with being Rogers' friend.

He took a deep breath. If this backfired, he was only going to hate himself for the rest of his life.

He walked down the length of the dugout, kicking paper cups out of the way, and deliberately sat right next to Rogers, fitting even his big ass easily into the wide buffer zone left by the rest of the team. There were a few audible gasps, and Palmer actually put a hand up over his mouth like a shocked schoolgirl. Pudge would have laughed at it if he hadn't felt so close to throwing up from terrified nerves himself.

Rogers turned a desperate look on him. Pudge took another deep breath, aware that the entire dugout was watching him with extreme trepidation.

"We can get these stupid fuckers, OK? You and me, we got dis. No problems." He smiled and ceremoniously laid a hand on Rogers' shoulder. A kind of sigh rose up from the dugout; the last line of perfect game etiquette had been breached, someone had dared to touch the starting pitcher, and now it was just a matter of waiting to see how angry the Baseball Gods would get.

Rogers closed his eyes briefly and inhaled through his nose, like he was trying to draw actual physical strength from Pudge in the form of little airborne particles. "Yeah. We got 'em. We got 'em."

They did, in fact, have them. Angel after Angel went down swinging; by the seventh they had learned that Rogers' pitches and Bean's strike zone matched up perfectly, that if they stood there and just looked at the pitches, they were almost certainly going to be called out. But, swinging, they kept striking out, and when they did not strike out, they hit balls right at the fielders.

Pudge had never experienced anything quite like it. He and Rogers were perfectly in sync, and he became more and more aware of it as the game wore on. He would think of a pitch to throw, and almost before he could put his fingers down Rogers would be nodding. It was like they were one organism, some invisible strings connecting them down the line between home plate and the pitcher's mound, something too fine to be seen with the naked eye. The slightest twang from Rogers on the mound and Pudge felt it like a skip in his own heartbeat, and adjusted his game plan, which was ever-shifting anyways, to suit.

Rex Hudler led off the ninth inning with a long ball to right center. It was low, the very worst kind of drive for an outfielder to run down, screaming in a line over the infield more like a football than a baseball, and Pudge stood, his heart in his throat, watching Rusty Greer, the rangy-limbed and affable center fielder, race towards it.

He saw the exact moment when Greer realized he wasn't going to make it there in time, saw Greer desperately heave himself at the ball, leaving his feet and extending, fully horizontal, over the grass, seeming to hang in space for one long moment before crashing back down. It was fairly deep in the outfield; Pudge could see Greer on the ground, but he could not tell if the ball had bounced, if it had rolled, where it might be. And then Greer sat up on his knees and raised his glove hand.

He had caught it. He must have caught it a mere foot above the ground, but he had caught it.

Rogers made a circuit of the mound, looking down, lips moving minutely as he said something to himself. Pudge pressed a hand to the center of his chest protector and just breathed for a few seconds. The umpire politely waited without comment.

The first pitch to Chris Turner, batting behind Hudler, bounced in the dirt by his foot and squirted away. Pudge ran after it, doing a quick assessment in his head: would it help or hurt, at this point, to go out to the mound and try to calm Rogers down? Back behind the plate he stared out at Rogers and decided against it. Rogers had dug in, set his jaw, and there was nothing Pudge could do or say to make matters better, but plenty he could say to make it worse. Sometimes being a catcher was all about figuring out how to stay the hell out of the pitcher's way, just do the least amount of damage.

Turner grounded out. Gary DiSarcina, the shortstop, was the next and potentially last man up. Two outs in the bottom of the ninth, the game still perfect, nothing but zeroes as far as the eye could see. The infield shifted nervously, checking their footing, kicking stray clods of dirt away from the bases in case they had to make a close play. He could not see the outfielders as clearly, but assumed they were going through similar rituals, saying whatever prayers they could, asking that the ball please go to someone else, but if it had to come to them, let it be an easy one, let there be no glare from the stadium lights and not the slightest breath of wind.

It was a terrible situation for DiSarcina. Make the last out and his team would lose in one of the most shameful ways possible, not having reached base _once_. But if he got a hit, or even a walk, he would be ruining a historical moment, and Rangers fans would forever know him as The Asshole Who Broke Up Kenny Rogers' Perfect Fuckin' Game. Inasmuch as Pudge was capable of feeling sympathy for an Angel at that moment, he felt for DiSarcina. But most of his emotion had been put on freeze, building up and up and up behind a temporary wall, where he was stashing it until the game was over, after which it would be free to burst through as violently as it liked, be the outcome good or bad.

Rogers pulled his lower lip in through his teeth, let loose a short stream of spit. He walked up the back of the mound and wiped his mouth with the side of his glove, careful to do it before he stepped onto the rubber.

Pudge stood. DiSarcina took a few swings, way off to the side of the box. Pudge stared at Rogers, who stared back, the distance between them burned away into something negligible. Pudge could not hear the crowd anymore, could see nothing that was not in the tunnel of vision that had grown up between him and the pitching rubber.

He dropped into his crouch and put a hand down in the air between his knee pads, a simple gesture, no need to change signs with nobody on base. Rogers compressed his lips once the way he always did when he'd made a decision on how he was going to pitch to a guy.

DiSarcina swung through the first pitch. Pudge raised his glove arm-- _good boy, Kenny, good pitch_ \-- and threw the ball back. Rogers wiped his forehead, looked in, pressed his lips together again, just the once.

He threw the pitch-- Pudge came up on the balls of his feet, every muscle in his body seized tight-- DiSarcina made soft contact and the ball rose into the air as every man, woman, and child in the stadium came up to their feet with it. The ball soared to center field, just five ounces of indistinct white, a hundred thousand eyes following it up, up, then down, accelerating almost gently towards the grass and history or disappointment--

\--and the ball landed, squarely, easily, in Rusty Greer's upraised glove. His arms stayed up; Greer was shouting, jumping.

Pudge was at the mound so fast that Rogers did not even have time to yell. He grabbed Rogers right around the numbers and boosted him up off the ground; Rogers was almost half a foot taller than him, but in that moment he seemed to weigh no more than Dereck did.

The rest of the team stormed the mound immediately. They were separated briefly by the screaming mass of ballplayers who had to hug Rogers, or pound him on the back, or even just touch his hand. People were trying to touch Pudge too, like he owned some share in the magic of the moment. When the natural movement of the press of overjoyed Rangers brought him and Rogers back together, he hugged him again. This time Rogers hugged him back, hard as he could, hollering wordless happiness in his ear.

"Perfect!" Pudge shouted back at him. "Perfect! You…" He reached around with one hand and grabbed the back of Rogers' neck.

"What?!" Rogers shouted.

" _Perfecto, idiota_!" Pudge laughed, giving the back of Rogers' neck a sharp shake, like he'd do with a rambunctious puppy.

"Perfect? I thought… a no-hitter! I thought it was just…"

Rogers' eyes were wide, the full knowledge of what he'd done sinking in slowly, and Pudge was hit hard by the desire to kiss him-- a friendly kiss, the sort of kiss he'd give a cousin at a wedding. But every camera in the world, it felt like, was trained directly on them, and Americans did not do that, and God knew Rogers would never let him live it down, so instead he just laughed again, amazed and disbelieving and happy, a perfect pitcher in his arms, perfectly caught.

 **1999**

Their biggest problem, that year, was pitching. It would be obvious to anyone who watched them play for more than a couple of series, but it was _painfully_ obvious to Pudge, who knew what it felt like to catch a good pitcher and therefore also knew what it felt like to catch for someone who _wasn't_ any good. Ranger management in their infinite wisdom gave fifteen starts to a guy who couldn't keep his ERA under 8.00, and twenty-five starts to a guy who was almost 40 years old (and not named Nolan Ryan). Their number one starter would have been a number three, at most, on any other team, and nobody in the front offices, so far as Pudge could tell, was willing to do anything about it.

It was of course pointless to hope that Ryan would come out of retirement, come swooping in with an angry glint in his eye to save them all. More realistic was the hope that a good active pitcher would somehow find his way onto their roster. He found himself hoping, almost to the point of prayer, that he would show up to the ballpark one day and Rogers would be sitting there like he'd never left.

But Rogers _was_ gone, signed with the Yankees following the 1995 season, riding high on the strength of his efforts in '94. When the Yankees won the World Series in '96, he called Pudge at five in the morning, hoarse and drunk and speaking in incomplete sentences, stuff about New York and history and careers, but it must not have taken with any kind of permanence, because by '98 he had moved on to Oakland, which was, organizationally, about as far from the Yankees as a player could possibly get.

Pudge for his own part had spent the same span of years settling more solidly into Arlington. There was a kind of nobility, or something, in that, staying in one place so long. Every year he added to his collection of Gold Gloves and Silver Sluggers and kitschy over-designed All Star Game jerseys, but not World Series rings, not yet. Rogers did not taunt him about it, although he definitely could have.

He had picked up enough tricks and tips, by now, to cajole a mediocre rotation into slightly less-than-mediocre performance. Or maybe he was flattering himself by thinking so, but the sportswriters at least agreed. It was a difficult year, taxing his resources to their limits; he had to use _all_ his little tricks with this team just to keep them competitive. For the first time in his life he found himself doing more than the absolute minimum amount of pregame preparation.

"Is all such bullshit," he muttered to Gregg Zaun. Zaun was the backup catcher.

Zaun dragged his fingers through the pile of papers they had strewn all over one of the clubhouse tables until he found one with hitter's profiles for the Orioles. He ran a finger down the first column of numbers with easy familiarity. "I dunno. It's good to know this stuff. I always figure, any angle we can get on these guys, right?"

Pudge sighed. "For years I don' do none of dis, shit work out OK."

"Then why do it now?"

"It makes _dem_ ," Pudge flicked a thumb into the corner of the clubhouse where most of the starters had their lockers, "feel better. Does it actually _do_ anythin', no, you know, but they feel like yes, so maybe someone will pitch a tiny bit better."

"Then it's doing something, ain't it?" Zaun said this with a kind of prissy self-satisfaction, riffling the pile of papers in front of him for emphasis.

Pudge rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, silently imploring _Dios en El Cielo_ to grant him patience. Zaun was the type of catcher who was never going to make it on pure talent and tried to fill up that deficiency with this preparation crap. What they really needed in Texas were better pitchers, not more time spent with scouting reports to give a false sense of security to the crappy pitchers they did have, but he wasn't going to be the one to spell _that_ out in so many words.

"It is like… you go to a doctor, sometime he give you a sugar pill. Right? Maybe you feel better but it is not a real _medicina_. Is all up here." He tapped his temple with the end of a pencil.

"Good research is more'n a sugar pill," Zaun said, sounding offended. "That's a crappy attitude for a catcher to have."

" _¿Excúseme?_ "

Zaun sniffed-- actually _sniffed_ , twitching up one side of his mouth as if to emphasize the flaring of his nostrils-- and looked away. "This isn't fun stuff. Nobody has fun with it. It's not a… a carnival ride. But if you think you can get by as a catcher… at this level… without doing it… well. You ain't gonna last long in this league."

" _Excuse me?_ " Pudge repeated, torn between amusement and irritation. "Dis is my _noveno_ season. Nine. If I was doin' somethin' wrong, I think I would know by now."

"Let me give you a little advice," Zaun said. He reached across the table and put a hand on Pudge's shoulder. Pudge twisted his neck around to stare at it in open disbelief. He was 27 years old-- he wasn't some kind of kid. Zaun was 28 himself, not exactly an elder statesman.

"You hit pretty good. Really good," Zaun amended. "But that's just, like… one part of the equation. If you want to keep catching, you have to _be a catcher_. It's not enough to just do good shit with the bat." He patted Pudge's shoulder. "I mean, maybe you want to move over to first in a couple years or something. I don't know your, uh, plans. But if you wanna stick with this catching thing… think about it."

"Uh. Sí, I will t'ink 'bout it," Pudge said, almost faint with incredulity.

Later, still reeling from the sheer effrontery of it all, he unloaded the entire thing onto Juan Gonzalez, just because he had to tell _someone_ , and Gonzalez knew him better than most; they had been playing together in Texas for the whole of Pudge's career, and they had played school ball against each other back in Puerto Rico, when they were both kids.

They were sitting on the bench, watching Todd Zeile bat against Mike Mussina with half an eye each. Mussina was pitching very well, and Mike Morgan, who had started for the Rangers, had given up about ten runs in the first inning. There was, at that point, a certain lack of urgency to the game. //Are you kidding me?// Gonzalez asked. //Is he seriously for real?//

Pudge shrugged. //Apparently I'm not a real catcher. I guess they forgot to tell me?//

//I wonder what world he's been living in.// Gonzalez leaned forward to peer down the bench at Zaun, who could not speak Spanish, but was shooting them little uncomfortable looks anyways, like he had gotten the gist of their conversation. //You aren't a catcher. Huh. Maybe I'm not a hitter, then?//

Pudge laughed. Gonzalez was batting over .300, and had been doing so for most of the year.

//I mean, let's be reasonable. Look at the big picture, OK.// Gonzalez made a wide _big picture_ gesture with his hands, like he was petting the sides of a globe. //What are you? What am I? And what's _he_? You and me, we have been very good for a long time. Right? Everyone knows who we are… everyone _definitely_ knows who you are this year, Mr. Best Catcher Ever. Only reason we're still in this race, you are.// Pudge waved him off, but Gonzalez just grinned and shook his head. //No, but you know it, OK, and everyone who knows anything about baseball knows it. Mr. Backup Researcherson over there, what the hell does he know?//

//He knows how to find everything in the video room?// Pudge suggested.

//Too bad he won't find video of _his_ at-bats in there,// Gonzalez cracked, //what with someone who isn't even a catcher catching 'most every game instead of him,// which sent them both into fits of laughter. Zaun, standing by himself by the bat rack, rolled a bat between his palms and frowned.

**

For a certain period of time in the middle of the summer, all anyone in Texas could talk about was the Hall of Fame induction ceremony. That year's class consisted of George Brett, Robin Yount, and Nolan Ryan, who had been voted in near-unanimously.

Everyone knew, or thought they knew, that Ryan had been a huge influence on the young Pudge Rodriguez, and so people kept talking to him about Ryan, wanting to know things that Ryan had said and things that Ryan had done. He was aware that he was starting to develop a cringing, hunted look whenever someone said Ryan's name around him, but he did not know what he could do to stop it.

"Y'gonna go see the cer-uh-mony? Be there for ol' Nolan?" Greer asked, casual and innocent in the clubhouse after a game with the Angels. Pudge winced so hard that he knocked a pot of IcyHot cream off the pile of medical supplies wedged into the corner of his locker. It rolled away across the floor, Greer's eyes tracking it thoughtfully.

"Take it that's a no?"

"S'a middle of a season…I cannot jus' take time off…"

"Coach'd let you, if you said y'wanted to. Mr. Nolan in the Hall, that's kind of a big deal to those guys," Greer said, waving a hand vaguely over his head. The front offices were upstairs.

Pudge shook his head silently, not trusting himself to speak. He thrust his hands into the mess of jerseys hanging in his locker as if he was trying to find one in particular, hoping the fabric would hide the fact that his hands were suddenly shaking.

 _Be there for Ryan_. That was the worst thing he could do. Getting inducted into the Hall of Fame was one of the biggest moments of any ballplayer's life; it was one of the ultimate baseball goals, right up there with winning the World Series. Ryan would not want to stand behind that coveted podium, look out into the crowd and be forcibly reminded of one of his biggest mistakes.

"So, uh. You think he's wearin' a Rangers hat on his plaque?" Greer asked. Changing the subject, at least a little, something for which Pudge was pathetically grateful.

"Sí, of course," he said. "His best years, dey are in Texas."

"Sure were," Greer said, his voice turning wistful. "Got here a year too late, Ah did. You were lucky, gettin' to play with him an' all."

"Luckiest catcher dere is," Pudge agreed, automatic. He was surprised to hear his own voice sounding calm, like the truth of the statement somehow made it easier to say. Luckiest catcher there was. Maybe so. Maybe there _was_ something to that, after all.

**

So they muddled through the season. Handling the pitchers was a constant smoke-and-mirrors act, but that was his job, to keep that smoke pumping and those mirrors all shined up. Their bullpen, strangely, was not bad; Jeff Zimmerman, one of their relievers, could actually be called _good_. The West was not very strong, which helped.

Mostly they relied on hitting. Palmeiro was getting older, but in the American League he could be sustained as a designated hitter, where batter-friendly Arlington still conspired to help him blast the ball out 30 or 40 times a season. Between Gonzalez and Greer they had one of the best-hitting outfields there was, and Pudge was, not to put too fine a point on it, the best-hitting catcher in the AL. They were getting wins for pitchers who did not, on their own merits, actually deserve them, but they _were_ getting the wins, and that was the main thing.

They won the division.

It was rather startling, even for the actual guys on the team, who had seen the season the whole way through from the front lines. Excited articles about them started showing up in the newspapers and magazines. There were only a few dissenting voices, a few jaded sportswriters who had been in the business a long time and tended to hold a dim view of pitching-poor teams in the postseason.

Johnny Oates, the manager that year, gave them a series of rousing speeches in the locker room, which Pudge flagrantly ignored, using the time to replace all the spikes on his cleats and dig the impacted dirt and grass out of the cleat brackets while he was at it. The last two times they had made it to the postseason they had lost in the first round to the Yankees. Their pitching was not any better this time around, and they were first up against the Yankees again.

"You're bein' too pessimistic," said Ruben Mateo, who was new and didn't know any better.

"Hmm," said Pudge, who was not, and did.

**

He didn't say anything when they lost to the Yankees in three games. Again. That was easy, though: nobody wanted to hang around the stadium and say anything to anyone.

By that point Rogers had been traded to the Mets, who were in the process of winning the NLDS. Without any games of his own to play, Pudge settled down with Dereck and Amanda on his couch in Miami to watch each and every one of Rogers' starts while Maribel, six months pregnant and beautifully round, rolled her eyes at him and threw out all the socks he'd worn that season.

//They don't have any holes! They're still good!// Pudge protested. //Why can't you just wash them?//

Maribel held up one of the offending socks between the very tips of her thumb and forefinger. It was so stiff that it did not even dangle from her hand, but stuck straight out like some cardboard parody of a sock. //Because I am a human being. No human being should have to wash this… thing. You make how much money? Be a man. Buy new socks. And if you value your skin, you will wash them more than once next year.//

There was, of course, nothing Pudge could say to that, so he retreated back to the living room. Neither Dereck nor Amanda washed their own socks, and they would not berate him for it.

The Mets did not, in his professional opinion, have a very good pitching staff. Aside from Rogers, who hadn't even been there the entire season, their best starters were Al Leiter and an aged Orel Hershiser. He explained this carefully to the kids. Dereck, who was seven, listened seriously; Amanda, who was four, was much more interested in coloring, although she was not particularly good at staying inside the lines yet. Maribel had gotten her a free giveaway Florida Marlins coloring book, which Pudge did not immediately replace with a Rangers coloring book both because he didn't know if such a thing existed and because it was hilarious to watch her determinedly coating Alex Fernandez's face with purple crayon.

The Mets beat out the Diamondbacks and fought the Braves hard, which was more than Pudge had expected them to do. The sixth game went eleven innings before they brought Rogers on in relief, tied at nine. He loaded the bases with a double and two intentional walks. There had been so many substitutions that Pudge could not keep track, but the catcher was no longer Mike Piazza-- it was some other Met. A nobody backup. No one Pudge would have trusted with a pitcher in a still-unfamiliar league, with the game and the series and the season hanging in the balance.

The TV cameras followed Rogers as he walked stiff-legged around the back of the mound. He looked uncomfortable, not confident in his own stuff; he was hiding it fairly well, but Pudge knew his mannerisms better than almost anyone else's. And what were they thinking with those intentional walks? Those were not Rogers' calls, but he would feel the stress of their presence on the basepaths keenly, he would feel all the more responsible for them because his own manager had not trusted him to get them out, and why didn't the Mets _know_ that, _Pudge_ knew that, they were screwing this all up--

//Papa, what's wrong?// Dereck asked, looking at him with some concern. He realized, belatedly, that he had clenched both of his fists in the couch cushions, arms tensed all the way up through his shoulders. He forcibly unlocked his fingers and tried to relax. He was not on the field, he was not crouching behind the plate, there was nothing he could do.

Rogers walked the next batter, forcing in the winning run. Pudge turned off the TV; he did not need or want to see the Braves celebrating, the look on Rogers' face as he headed for the dugout.

The Braves went on to, predictably, lose the World Series to those same damn Yankees. It ought to have been a crappy end to a tiring, wasted season, but someone, somewhere, had been paying attention to Texas: a couple of weeks after the end of the Series he got a phone call from Scott Boras, his overbearing but undeniably effective agent. He had been named the American League MVP.

Dereck was over the moon about it, much more excited than Pudge himself. //I'm gonna tell Rico my Papa is most important inna world!//

//What?// Pudge laughed. He reached out to pat Dereck on the head, but Dereck ducked away and caught his hand in midair. Good reflexes. //It's not that kind of MVP, I'm not MVP of the world.//

" _Most Val-yoo-ubble_ ," Dereck carefully pronounced. //It means you're the best ever and ever and ever. Inna whole world. I'm gonna tell Rico and he's gonna be soooo jealous.//

//Who the hell is Rico?// Pudge asked, after both children had been put to bed. //Rico, Rico, it's all he talks about.//

Maribel gave him a funny look, some combination of temporarily narrowed eyes and angled mouth that Pudge could not interpret. //You don't know? Of course, I forget you don't.// She sighed. There was no overt rebuke in her tone or words, but Pudge felt a hot stab of guilt in his chest anyways.

//Rico is his best friend, from school. Here in Miami,// she added, as if Pudge might have forgotten where his own son went to school. //He comes over to the house all the time. His mother works for some law firm, she's not around a lot during the day, so it's good for him, you know, and it's good for Dereck to have another little boy his age around.//

//Oh. I mean, sure, of course,// he said, stumbling a little when her eyes narrowed even further. //He's a nice kid, this Rico?//

//Very nice. Very polite. He always says 'Thank you Mrs. Rodriguez,' when I make them snacks, I must have told him a thousand times to call me Maribel but he never does…//

He listened as closely as he could as she went on about Rico, and Dereck, and the things they did together, the little games and petty intrigues of second graders, the ways they annoyed Amanda and how nice it was when they actually let her play with them for once. These were his children. His family. It was obvious that he should know these things. But he had to be told, like any other common visitor.

When they went to bed that night he buried his face in her hair while she worked him to hardness with her fingers (//It's been a while,// she said. //I know,// he said, trying to not think about the bars and parties on the road, mostly succeeding). He slipped inside her carefully, braced high up on his arms so that he would not put pressure on her stomach. It took a long time to find a position where he could grind up against her just so, since he had to use both his hands to hold himself up, but when they finally got it right she shuddered through an orgasm so long it was almost scary. He had forgotten what it was like, sometimes, with the pregnancy hormones.

She fell asleep curled up on her side, facing away from him. He watched the shoulder she had propped in the air rising and falling with her breathing for a while, but he could not get to sleep, and after a time he got up, slipped on a pair of sweatpants, padded down the hall to Dereck's room.

Dereck had posters up all over the walls. There were some of his other favorite players-- Ken Griffey Jr, Roberto Alomar, Moises Alou-- but most of the posters were of Pudge. Pudge hitting, Pudge catching, Pudge pointing up to the sky after a big hit, Pudge staring moodily at the camera, Pudge dramatically tossing his catcher's mask aside to heroically run to the aid of his pitcher. The wall over Dereck's bed had a large corkboard on it, to which Dereck had been carefully affixing any and all Pudge baseball cards he could find, so that a hundred Pudges were always staring down at him as he slept.

Next to that was Amanda's room. He cracked the door slightly to look in on her too. Her room was entirely pink, except for the nightlight next to her bed, which was an illuminated plastic version of the Rangers logo, glowing softly red and white and blue on her face.

It was pretty cool to be the league MVP, upon reflection. He eased both doors closed, careful to not make a sound, and tiptoed back to bed.

 **2000**

With a loud, resounding crack, Luis Alicea fell through the table. But Palmeiro had had the foresight to remove all the real furniture from his house and stash it in the (locked) basement and one of his little bolt-hole apartments downtown, so the table was just a cheap folding one. Palmeiro muttered something vaguely insulting about the veterans failing to set a good example, and went to find another table. Alicea, still lying on his back in the middle of the crushed table, picked up one of the beer cans that had been sitting there and opened it.

The beer, naturally, sprayed out of the can in great foamy spurts, covering Alicea and anyone else unlucky enough to be standing nearby. It started to drip back off the ceiling as Alicea laughed hysterically.

Pudge made a strategic retreat out of the room. It was slow going: there was not even room for a Yankee Stadium rat to get through. Many more people had packed themselves into Palmeiro's house for his New Year's Eve party than the house was probably supposed to hold, and Pudge's journey forced him to erupt into the middle of conversations, step on toes, press indecently hard up against women who were not Maribel (who had been in Puerto Rico with the children and her parents since Christmas), and get all manner of beverages slopped down his front. His goal was the front door, which was not technically much farther than a few rooms and hallways away, but might as well have been in another city.

Greer grabbed him around the neck as he tried to slink by, wanting to drunkenly introduce him to some of his friends from "back home in good ol' Bama". Pudge edged away as quickly as possible; with the exception of Greer, who had played with him for a long time and was used to him, he did not as a rule get along with these jock-type Alabamans. They always seemed to have a kind of unconscious sixth sense about him, which put both them and him in an awkward position: they had to decide if he needed beating up, and he had to decide what he would do if it seemed like they were about to beat him up. It put everyone on edge and was something he generally tried to avoid. But he did not manage to get more than five steps away from Greer and his friends before Juan Gonzalez fell into him and started kissing him sloppily on the ear with tears leaking out of his eyes.

The Alabamans stared. Pudge, panic starting to fray the edges of his veteran cool, backed away as fast as he could, dragging Gonzalez with him.

"Gon' miss you, gon' miss you _soooo much_ ," Gonzalez mumbled, pausing to nuzzle Pudge before repeating himself, switching messily between Spanish and English. He had been traded to Detroit at the beginning of November and was just biding his time before moving on.

Palmeiro's party was an annual tradition. Pudge had first attended it after his rookie season, when 1991 turned into 1992, and he had not missed a New Year's since. Christmas he always spent in Puerto Rico with his family, flying back up to Texas a few days before the end of the month. The tradition had continued even during Palmeiro's five year hiatus in Baltimore, because, really, who would have wanted to spend December in _Baltimore_ when he had a perfectly good house in _Texas_?

It was typically a raucous affair, but it had gotten even more out of hand than usual this year, everyone waiting to see whether or not the world would end when everything ticked over from 1999 into 2000. There was a certain air of apocalyptic celebration about the whole thing, and it was as though they had all independently decided that if the world _was_ going to end, there were worse places to be than a house full of professional athletes.

//I have to go outside,// he said, trying to shove Gonzalez off of his shoulder, where Gonzalez had inconveniently and heavily draped himself. The door was in sight, but still just out of reach. Palmeiro slid by, parting the crowd briefly as he bore a new folding table sideways in front of him like a long, slim battering ram.

//Why? You aren't gonna miss me?// Gonzalez was starting to get weepy again, trying to rub his face on the front of Pudge's shirt. He did not care about the additional wetness-- the shirt was already a write-off-- but they were still in view of the Alabamans, several of whom were eying him narrowly.

//I'll miss you very much. So much. More than I'd miss the sun,// Pudge said. //In fact I'm so overcome with sadness, I need to go outside and catch my breath, OK? So you sit right here…// He tipped Gonzalez onto a little bench next to the door, which in saner times was probably where Palmeiro sat to tie his shoelaces before going out. Just now it was playing host to a passed-out guy with a long, pale face, someone Pudge vaguely recognized as one of Palmeiro's Oriole friends, but Gonzalez slumped easily on top of him and Pudge was finally able to sneak out the door and onto Palmeiro's front lawn.

The air was much cooler outside, and it was quieter, although not _quiet_ : someone was setting off small fireworks in Palmeiro's backyard, and the music and loud voices from inside could still be heard, slightly muffled. The bushes on the left of the front door were issuing suspiciously rhythmic rustles; someone, at least, was having a good New Year's Eve. Pudge walked past these without bothering to look to see who it was and made his way down the long front walk to the street.

Soon enough he saw someone winding carefully around the rows of parked cars down the street towards the house. He waved, even though it was not like Palmeiro's house would be hard to pick out.

Rogers emerged from the night bearing a bottle of champagne and a grin. Pudge hugged him hard. They stood there on the sidewalk for a long time, long enough for Rogers' shirt to start to soak up some of the mess from the front of Pudge's shirt.

Traded from the A's, done with the Mets, Rogers was a free agent again. Pudge had been willing to go to the front office and beg if he had to, but Texas had asked Rogers to come home all on their own. Pudge had not heard any formal announcements of Rogers' decision. But this-- Rogers' presence on Rafael Palmeiro's front lawn as the clock ticked down on the century-- was as good an indication of what he'd chosen as any press conference.

"Welcome back."

"S'good to be back." Rogers gave him one final hard squeeze and backed off to look at the house. "I hadda park practically in the next county. How many people are _in_ there?"

Pudge grimaced. "Too many. You wanna go aroun' back? People back dere, but maybe not so many."

They watched a red firework explode low over the house. Inside, a thumping rap bass began to rattle the windows on the lower floor as someone new gained control of the stereo with the biggest speakers. "Yeah, OK," Rogers said.

**

Palmeiro had an extravagantly large pool behind his house, flagrantly disregarding everything anyone had ever said about conserving water in Texas. The explosives were all down at one end, where there was open space next to the pool, an expanse of lawn that was now dotted with lightly smoking craters and empty beer bottles. The other end had only a few feet of poolside territory before it terminated in a stone wall fronted with a narrow bed of plants. These also had empty beer bottles nestled in around their roots, but only a few.

They settled into a pair of deck chairs as far from the fireworks as they could manage so that they would be able to hear each other talk. Rogers had to update Pudge on his family, Pudge had to do likewise, and Pudge could talk about his family for _days_. A skinny white woman in a short silver dress and no shoes, flinching away from the sparking rockets being set off, sat down on the edge of the pool in front of them, dangling her feet in the water and smiling to herself as Pudge hit his stride on little kid anecdotes. He idly scanned her hands, force of habit, and saw a rather nice-looking ring there. So she was at least someone's fiancée, if not wife. Nobody Pudge recognized, but that didn't mean much; she could have been with an Orioles player.

"Anything good on the side lately?" Rogers asked, once Pudge had run through all the most recent stories. Pudge waggled a hand in the air, _nothing important_. Rogers nodded. "Yeah, me too. Road fucks here'n there, nothin' ground-shatterin'. Are the pickings gettin' lean, or am I just gettin' pickier 'bout my tail?"

The woman shot them one scandalized look over her shoulder before clambering to her feet and stalking gingerly off across the lawn. "Aw, baby, what, is it something I said?" Rogers hollered, before lowering his voice to an annoyed grumble. "Listen to conversations that don't involve you, you're gonna hear shit you don't wanna hear."

"I think we get more picky," Pudge said, watching her go. Not bad, really, although not much ass; nothing worth getting too excited over. "Groupies, dey are the same."

Rogers began to scratch at the foil wrapping around the top of the bottle of champagne he'd brought. "Used to be, I was willin' to jump just 'bout anything that looked willin' to jump me. You know? But now… I figure, I've been around long enough, I paid my dues, I'm only gonna fuck the cream o'the crop." He tapped his wedding ring lightly against the neck of the bottle. "And my wife. But you know."

Pudge nodded. "Exactly. Is not jus' anyone who will do no more. Leave dat for the rookies." He watched as Rogers managed to get the rest of the foil off and popped the cork out of the champagne with his pocketknife. "Not midnight yet."

Rogers dismissed this with a snort. He flicked the cork to Pudge, who caught it easily, considered, then fired it across the pool, where it hit one of the fireworks enthusiasts in the side, causing him to whirl around and start loudly abusing one of his peers in what sounded like Dominican Spanish.

"Really is good t'be back," Rogers sighed. He took a long drink from the bottle before passing it over to Pudge. Pudge took an equally long drink and almost sprayed it all back out as bubbles tickled threateningly up his nasal passages. Rogers gazed at him fondly while he wiped his now crazily watering eyes on his sleeves. "Good to be back with a real catcher too."

"What, you didn't like dose other guys?" Pudge asked, once he had mostly recovered. "I heard dat Posada kid was OK. And the great Mike Piazza…"

"Mike Piazza. Don't even get me _started_ on _Piazza_." Rogers spit out the name like a curse. " _Him_. Fuck. You know how everyone always says he's a poof?"

Pudge frowned and started to sit up, but Rogers angrily gestured him down. "Lemme finish, lemme finish, Christ. I was _sayin'_ , everyone calls him a damn pansy poofter, but the truth of it is, he gives quality catchin' poofs like you a bad name. He's a disgrace to the whole… poofdom."

" _Poofdom_."

"Oh, shut up. I was bein' nice. Smart-ass MVP motherfucker."

Pudge grinned out at the pool and took another, much more careful pull from the bottle. A stand of what looked like honest to God pointy-nosed, fin-tailed rockets had been set up across the way. Someone was setting fire to their backsides with a barbecue lighter while everyone else backed up to the limits of the backyard. Palmeiro had come out to stand on the back porch and watch, arms folded across his chest, presumably making sure nobody was about to blow up his house.

A grunting noise prompted him to stretch over the gap between their chairs and hand the bottle to Rogers, who did not even bother to wipe off the mouth of it before drinking. He left his hand dangling insolently over the arm of Rogers' chair. Rogers shifted the champagne to his other hand, draped his own arm casually on top of Pudge's, and started flicking at his knuckles.

An incredibly loud sizzling noise came from the rockets, followed shortly by a deafening bang as they all went off at once. Several drunk baseball players toppled backwards into the pool, where they probably would have drowned if it hadn't happened to be the shallow end, which was all of three feet deep. The sky filled with brilliant red and green explosions, reflected just as brilliantly in the surface of the pool, so that the entire backyard was briefly lit up with an off-color parody of daylight.

"Happy New Year," Rogers said.

Pudge glanced down at his watch. "Actually, still almos' an hour left."

Rogers lifted his free hand and cuffed Pudge roughly about the back of his head. Pudge snorted, grabbed Rogers' hand as it descended back towards the arm rest of the deck chair. Rogers' fingernails were not as short and tidy as they would be come spring, but his pitching calluses were all the same; Pudge could feel them mapped out under his own fingers, a promise of fastballs and curveballs and changeups just waiting to be thrown in the new season.

 **2003**

In Arlington the entire ballpark structure, though shabby and overheated, forever betraying its minor league origins in small annoying ways, was filled with a singular sense of purpose, one unambiguous drive that propped up its rafters and padded its harsh metal bleachers, sustained its broad outfield of fried grass. It wasn't perfect-- the clubhouses a little too small, the dugout tunnels too low, the absolute lack of shade for the fans-- but the entire place had been built to allow fans to watch baseball, ballplayers to play baseball.

This wasn't Arlington. This was Pro Player Stadium, an untidy octagon that loomed sullen in the humidity over Dan Marino Boulevard. Miami fucking Gardens; one of those totally fake outcroppings of Miami that had nothing to do with the city itself, incorporated just this year. The Marlins, expansion status and all, were technically older than the city their ballpark was in. He was still figuring that one out.

The field extended where it should have curled in, continued on where a normal ball field would have ended. The dimensions felt forced onto the place out of necessity and not by design, an illusion that wasn't just illusory. Pro Player's natural field configuration was rectangular, perfect for football and occasionally _fútbol_ ; the irregular extended diamondoid shape of a baseball field really _was_ an imposition. His first month there, it made Pudge's skin crawl, a kind of geometric subliminal wrongness about the place. More than once he nearly tripped while shagging flies in the outfield, some trick of the wall in the corner of his eye convincing him that he was about to crash into it.

The baseball clubhouses, built years after the football clubhouses, had a tacked-on, afterthought feel to them. The warning track, a strip of fake dirt meant to absorb water that could be peeled up when the Dolphins needed the place, was a constant source of complaints from the outfielders. The whole thing was a sprawling orange and teal monument to football. It was, in truth, not a baseball park at all, and it was hard to shake the idea that baseball was only grudgingly allowed to eke out a tenuous existence there.

He got to spend his home games actually _at home_ , though, and that was the best thing, the real reason why he had signed. People-- reporters, coaches, any number of talking heads on TV-- were calling him a superstar now, the best catcher in the game, best catcher in both leagues. The best catcher in the whole world, to hear Boras talk. He probably could have gotten much more than the one-year contract he'd signed with Florida, but he didn't care about the money; he had been making plenty in Texas, by the end. The chance to spend half the season with the ability to kiss Dereck and Amanda and little Ivanna on their respective heads when he crept home after night games, that was worth more than anything any other team could have offered.

**

Catching in the National League was different, although he had (perhaps, on reflection, foolishly) not expected it. He had spent twelve years behind the plate at the highest level; how different, he had thought, could it possibly be?

Of course all the opposing batters were different, but there was also the fact that now all of his pitchers were batters themselves, making for a whole new set of catching experiences. Calling games was different (he had to account for the opposing pitcher in the lineup); calling inside pitches was different (he had to account for the fact that his pitchers would be retaliated against directly, not through teammates, and so were less willing to pitch hard inside); handling his own pitchers' preparation was different. Some of them, like Mark Redman, did not much care and only wanted to focus on throwing the ball, same as any AL pitcher. But others, like Dontrelle Willis, spent quite a lot of time agonizing over their ability to handle a bat and wanted to talk to him about hitting almost as often as they wanted to talk about pitching.

"Why do you care 'bout dis shit?" he asked. He had just finished showing Willis how to stand back in the batter's box, to give him more time to see if the incoming pitch was going to be a fastball or something offspeed. Willis was 21 years old, still wide-eyed about spring training. He had never hit against big league pitching before.

Willis gave him a skeptical, sidelong look. "Man, why _wouldn't_ I? If I hit good, I help out my own starts, that ain't no small thing." He eased back to the point where Pudge had scratched out a line in the dirt next to the plate and took a long arcing cut with his bat, swinging his hips around an imagined swivel point.

Pudge sighed and shook his head, holding out a hand for the bat so that he could show Willis the correct stance. Willis wore his hat with the brim flat and crooked; Pudge was constantly having to fight the urge to reach up and jerk it around, center it on his face, and he was afraid this meant that he was not just a vet, but was turning into one of those stereotypical cranky old baseball guys.

He was older than every single one of the starting pitchers on this team, and almost all of the relievers as well. It was a feeling to which he was going to have to become accustomed.

**

His first impression of Josh Beckett was formed before he even met the kid. Mike Redmond was the backup catcher, a holdover from the previous season. On the very first day of spring training he somehow ferreted Pudge out at the breakfast table in the park and sat down across from him, uninvited.

"You're Ivan Rodriguez, right?" he asked, pronouncing it wrong, giving it the Russian emphasis instead of the proper Spanish _Iván_.

"Please. Everybody call me Pudge," Pudge said, eyeing him curiously, not quite sure if he should be annoyed or not yet.

"Cool. Hi. Everyone calls me Old Dog, 'cause I'm old," Redmond said, off-handedly. "Sometimes they call me Reddy. You can call me whatever. But don't call me Red Man 'cause we already got one of those, right, it'd be confusing. I wanted to warn you about the pitchers."

"Uh…"

Redmond glanced from side to side, then leaned across the table towards Pudge. "Mostly Burnett and Beckett. I'm not telling you how to handle pitchers, like, in general, you know more 'bout that than I do, but I know these two guys better'n you and they're… not normal. You can't handle 'em normal." He drummed his fingers on the table and looked furtively around again. "Burnett is nuts. He can pitch real good when he gets it in his head that he's gonna, but he'll do it in the most freakish way possible. Like, he threw a no-hitter a couple years back but he walked the whole damn team and he was mad all game long. I mean, who's throwing from the stretch and pissing hellfire at the umps when they're in the middle of a no-hitter, right?"

Pudge blinked. "Uh, right…"

"Now Beckett, he's nuts too, but it's a different kind of nuts. Like Burnett is cashews and Beckett is peanuts, right? He only started like twenty games last year but he thinks he knows everything there is to know about baseball, you try'n tell him something and he just shuts down. He doesn't respect people who try to tell him shit, which is insane because the guy is, like, younger than babies. Also he gets blisters all the time and he'll try anything to fix 'em, it's the only thing he takes advice on and he takes the stupidest advice you can think of. If you told him sticking his hand in a bucket of dog sperm would cure his blisters he'd do it."

Pudge blinked again.

"OK, cool. Just wanted to let you know before you got started. I'll see you out there." Redmond slapped the table once, emphatically, before leaving as precipitously as he had arrived.

Dog sperm?

He had no idea what to expect-- some kind of rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth monsters _at least_. But when he trotted out to the field on that first day of spring training, he was surprised. Burnett was only a little bit crazy-looking, mostly around his eyes, which were pale and piercing in a way that made Pudge uncomfortable. He could imagine that gaze leveled challengingly at him as he came out to the mound during a game, sure.

But Beckett seemed (deceptively?) normal. He had a round, almost moony face that he had tried to toughen up with a scruff of dark hair on his chin, which was the style among very young ballplayers who wanted to look older. He had long limbs that it looked like he was still growing into, big hands and feet that he moved with the care of someone who had gone through a deeply awkward adolescence. When he smiled it always showed more in one corner of his mouth than the other.

He looked harmless. He was cute. Pudge tried to not think about it.

This was an easy matter in February, because the distractions were many. Even with just pitchers and catchers at practice, before the rest of the team reported, there was plenty for Pudge to do. He had to familiarize himself with the pitchers he would certainly have during the season, and he had to at least vaguely familiarize himself with the pitchers who might or might not spend all year in the minors. He had to get to know all the coaches, what they thought about how baseball should be played and how well or poorly this dovetailed with what he thought about how baseball should be played. He had to get to know the other catchers, which meant he spent a lot of time with Redmond, who did not get any less weird with repeated exposure.

The reporters all wanted to know what he thought of the Marlins pitchers: how they compared to the pitchers the Rangers had had over the years, how they compared to the DH-toughened AL pitchers elsewhere in the league. Nobody invoked the name of Nolan Ryan, but Pudge kept hearing it all the same.

Burnett had a weird, stilted delivery that made it look like he was pitching through pain. Carl Pavano had a slider that seemed as though it might have potential. Brad Penny was a big guy who looked like he should throw hard, and mostly did. Redman had some of the most pathetic fastball velocities Pudge had ever seen on a pitcher who also failed to have a spectacular offspeed pitch to compensate, but he was a lefty, which explained everything. Willis' delivery defied description and just watching it gave Pudge a headache.

Beckett had a driving four seam fastball that came in looking faster than it actually was, a fair changeup, and a big overdramatic curve. He did not throw as hard as Ryan, and, it being the NL, he did not seem as interested in pounding the inside corner of the strike zone, but out of all the Marlins starters, Beckett was the only one who came close to reminding Pudge of what it had been like, catching Ryan.

Beckett also had a lazy Texan accent, a hunting rifle in his locker (unloaded), and a big round ass that tight teal pinstripes did nothing to hide. It was as if he'd been invented specifically and purposefully to drive Pudge absolutely insane.

**

Two starts into the season, Burnett began to complain of elbow soreness. This seemed ominous to Pudge, who saw intimations of doom in every pitcher complaint after years of working with stoic veterans in Texas who only complained when their arms were about to fall off, but they were all young in Florida. He was being paranoid. Half the time these kids were probably only bringing up pain because they hadn't yet been around long enough to know what level of soreness was normal for a big league pitcher.

Four starts into the season, they were playing the Cardinals at home. In the sixth inning Pudge called for a ball high and outside. Orlando Palmeiro was batting, and when Burnett floated a meatball right over the middle of the plate (very much _not_ high and outside), Palmeiro crushed it right back into the empty orange outfield stands.

Burnett turned on the mound to watch it go with his mouth hanging open and his right arm hanging limply by his side. Pudge could not yet read these Marlins as well as he could read, for instance, Rogers, but something about the way Burnett was standing there looked very Not Right to him. He glanced back to check that it was OK with the umpire, then trotted out to the mound.

He had to say Burnett's name three times before Burnett could focus on him, and he almost recoiled when Burnett did. The usually ice-pale eyes were wide, glassy, black. It took him a moment, but as soon as he understood what he was looking at he raised a hand, calling out for the trainer.

The pupils of Burnett's eyes were blown huge, dilated to the point where they seemed to take over his eyes. This was, as Pudge remembered it, a sign of many possible things. Drugs. A brain injury. More likely: a severe pain reaction.

Four days later Burnett was having Tommy John surgery to replace the shredded ligament in his right elbow.

They were playing that night in Arizona. Pudge heard Redmond, huddled with his phone in the closet that the Diamondbacks were trying to pass off as the opposing team weight room, leaving a message on Burnett's voicemail before the game. He briefly considered trying to do the same before deciding that Burnett would not, in all likelihood, give a shit. They had only worked four real games together and now Burnett was out for the rest of the season. Pudge essentially meant nothing to him.

Everyone was appropriately downcast to start the game, especially the pitchers, who were taking Burnett's need for surgery as a very bad sign indeed. It was another stark reminder of the way in which a young team reacted differently from an older team. Injuries had been treated like the unwelcome but natural course of things in Texas; on the Marlins they were alarming events that forced very young pitchers to confront their own pitching mortality, or something.

But when they jumped out to an early lead, Todd Hollandsworth and Alex Gonzalez hitting multi-run homers, it looked like things might work out-- might be survivable, anyways. Redman was plodding along with his usual unspectacular but effective pitching; calling games for him was extremely low-stress compared to the tense vigilance needed to call games for Burnett or Beckett.

Late in the game, Redman's turn in the batting order came up with men at first and third, and so Jeff Torborg, the manager, signaled for a bunt. Pudge hung himself over the dugout rail to watch. He was still trying to get a grip on the whole concept of pitchers who batted, trying to figure out what impact their at-bats had on their pitching performance in the next inning.

It was a very bad bunt, the sort of bunt an AL pitcher would have laid down, the ball popping straight up into the air, in a perfect position for the first baseman to catch the runner there off the bag for a double play. Redman came back into the dugout shaking his head, and his hand. He had caught the ball off of his thumb. It was reddened, a little swollen, but Redman seemed fine, his face alert (Pudge stared intently into his eyes until he was satisfied of this), his grip as firm as a left-hander's grip ever would be.

He pitched two more good innings. Pudge doubled, and Mike Lowell homered the both of them in. By the end of the seventh, blood had begun to pool under Redman's thumbnail. Pudge forcibly herded him over to the trainer, who frowned and dragged Redman down into the depths of the clubhouse.

It was only after the game that they heard that Redman had been taken to the hospital for X-Rays, and that his thumb was broken and he would be out for at least a month.

They were down two starting pitchers in two days.

So when Beckett's elbow started to hurt him so badly that he could not hide it anymore, a week later, it was all Pudge could do to keep from knocking the kid unconscious and dragging him off to some place where he could keep Beckett tied up, or locked up, where pitching could not find him and do him harm. The coaches for once were equally alarmed and had management pack him off to Dr. Andrews, some arm specialist in Alabama, without the usual delay they would have allowed to see how bad it might get.

Beckett came back a couple of days later, morose. "They're callin' it a _strain_ ," he said, in response to Pudge's frantic questioning. "Fifteen day DL, is what they're sayin'."

"Ay! They put you onna DL?" Pudge ground his fists into the sides of his head, squeezing his eyes shut. "What are we suppose to do? Who is suppose to make starts? _Madre de Dios_." Three pitchers gone-- _three!_ \-- in not even so many weeks. The season was barely under way and they were already fighting out from under odds so bad that it defied belief. Pitching was the single most important part of a team, no matter what some narrow-minded hitters might say, and it was their pitching that was being decimated, and it was all injuries, injuries on top of injuries, nothing anyone could do to prevent them or put a stop to it, and this team was _so_ young, what must they be thinking now, the work Pudge was going to have to do just to keep them all from despairing utterly, it was monstrous to contemplate, impossible--

"I know. I know. I'm sorry," Beckett said, sounding totally miserable. That was the only thing that could snap Pudge out of the spiral of catching-horror into which he'd started to descend: for him, misery in his pitchers was like the cry of a baby to its mother.

"Sorry? You don' gotta be sorry, it is not your fault," he said. Beckett looked down. Pudge grabbed him by the shoulders, making Beckett's head snap back up in surprise. "Hey. Is not like you need a surgery, no? Is jus'… they say, a strain, nothing in the tendons or what?"

Beckett shook his head once. His shoulders, under Pudge's hands, were tense.

"So it is nothing you can control. So it is not your fault. And is only 15 days, right? Not a 60-day DL, right? So we jus'. We jus' hold it together until you get back, and by then Red, he will start to get back, maybe, and we will be OK." He took a deep breath, looking right into Beckett's eyes (big, brown, so young it was like a punch in the chest). "It is early in the season. We will be OK."

Beckett held his gaze for a long moment, then looked away. "I still shoulda. I dunno. Somethin'."

"What, not pitch? Do you blame AJ for his tendon explode or whatever? You blame Red for a ball hit him inna hand?"

"No," Beckett muttered, very much like a surly student having an answer dragged out of him by a persistent teacher.

"Then how is this any more your fault? Because, it is not. OK, I got this, we will be fine and I can get us through this," Pudge said, becoming aware as he did that the rest of the clubhouse had gone quiet, listening. He was horrified to hear himself saying it-- _he_ could get them through it? What was he _thinking_?-- but when conversation resumed again, the tone was perhaps no longer quite as depressed as it had been. Some of the older players were nodding at him. Some of the younger pitchers were gazing at him in something like awe.

He took his hands away from Beckett's shoulders, self-consciously mindful of the other people looking at them now. Beckett touched the outside of his right elbow, startling him badly because he had not been expecting it-- hadn't been expecting any kind of reciprocal touch, not when he was the one who did the touching on this team.

"Fifteen days, an' a little more with rehab," Beckett said softly. His hand twitched like he wanted to touch Pudge's elbow again. "And then I'll be back. And you'll be… you guys'll be…"

"Fine," Pudge said, just as soft, only for Beckett to hear. "I will get us through."

**

What Pudge knew about Ugueth Urbina when he was first traded to the Marlins could fill a scouting report, and not much more. Twenty-nine years old. Venezuelan. Good movement on his pitches, tough on lefties. A closer in Montréal, so probably a back-end-but-not-quite-closing reliever anywhere else. He had dimples, good biceps, thick expressive eyebrows.

//What I wouldn't do to that boy,// Urbina sighed. They were in the hotel bar, huddled down at one end together. A small group of Marlins was clustered around a table, Derrek Lee and a bunch of pitchers. Lowell was in the middle of a quietly intense conversation with Miguel Cabrera at the other end of the bar. The rest of the team was out somewhere in the wilds of Philadelphia.

Pudge turned to follow the line of Urbina's gaze and came up against Carl Pavano. He wrinkled his nose. Urbina was leaning sloppily on the bar, his elbows sliding out from under him, shoulders slumped, but it wasn't the alcohol that made him look at Pavano like that.

When they first met, Pudge had looked Urbina up and down, not with any particular directed intent, just as a matter of course, until he realized that Urbina was doing _the exact same thing_. Urbina had realized what Pudge was doing at more or less the same time. There followed one night of frantic, mutual-gaydar-ping fucking. The sex was not exactly earth-shattering, more on the order of a sort of intense relief. What Pudge remembered most clearly was the way Urbina took off his belt: all in one motion, using just one hand to deftly undo the buckle and whip it out of his beltloops. Obviously practiced. Pudge had been on his knees, mouth watering, practically before the end of the belt snapped free.

After that, though, they had settled into an easy friendship, uncomplicated by further sex. He liked Urbina, liked how simple things were with him, the tacit understanding between them, but there was no real spark, nothing that would sustain a romantic or even just sexual relationship. Maybe he let himself be a little more physical with Urbina than he would be with most of the others: he put his hands on Urbina often, leaned into him unselfconsciously on the plane, cupped Urbina's right hand in both of his own right there in the dugout to look at it when Urbina thought he might be developing a hangnail. But he probably would have done all that anyways.

//Why don't you ask him, then, huh?//

Urbina pushed a thumb around the rim of his glass. //He wouldn't. Not a chance.// They both watched Pavano for a moment. He was listening to a story or something that Brad Penny was telling, nodding along, occasionally nudging Redman, who was sitting next to him, left thumb sticking stiffly out in its cast. Pavano wasn't into what they were into. Pudge had been around the league long enough, by now, to feel pretty certain about that.

//No harm in looking, though, that's what my Papa always said, eh? 'Course he wasn't talking 'bout big, mmm, butchy right-handers…// Urbina made another revolution of his glass rim, then propped himself precariously up and licked his thumb. He was too drunk to make it properly suggestive, but Pudge grinned and rolled his eyes anyways.

// _Speaking_ of big, butchy right-handers,// Urbina added, nudging Pudge sloppily with an elbow.

//What?//

//C'mon, c'mon. What about _your_ right-hander. You think he would?//

//He's not _my_ right-hander,// Pudge muttered, //and I'm not gonna try to find out. More trouble than it's worth.// He had not told Urbina about Ryan (he was not going to tell _anyone_ about Ryan), but he was pretty sure by now Urbina had figured out that Pudge had done _something_ with _some teammate_ at some point in the course of his Texas career.

Urbina shook his head, then kept slowly swinging it back and forth, like the momentum of it was too much for his alcohol-loose neck muscles to stop. //He likes you, though. Beckett, he likes you. More'n he likes anyone else here.//

//That's not saying much.//

//Maybe,// Urbina said. //Maybe, maybe, maybe.// He tried to wink and ended up blinking both eyes instead. Pudge reached over and rubbed his back fondly; Urbina sighed and melted a little further down towards the bartop. Glancing along the bar over Urbina's back, Pudge caught sight of Lowell looking at them. Lowell grinned, _good ol' Urbina, drunk off his ass again_. Pudge grinned back. Urbina was like this in Philadelphia and New York and Montréal and Chicago and every other city. There was nothing in the soft hilly decline of his shoulders, Pudge's hand soothing their lines, that the team hadn't seen before.

**

The first time Beckett turned his back on home plate, huffing and grumbling to himself in the wake of a call with which he disagreed, the umpire just rolled his eyes. It was Beckett's first start since coming off the DL, and the umpire seemed willing to cut him a little slack. A good sign. Not all umpires were so accommodating.

The second time, the umpire frowned and squinted at him. Pudge watched nervously out of the corner of his eye. After the fifth such occurrence, the umpire coughed. It was not just any cough. It was a particularly Portentous Umpire Cough, one that carried a surprising lot of nuance to a veteran, and the umpire knew full well that Pudge was precisely the sort of veteran who would get the message. He immediately stood up and held out his glove, facing the umpire squarely.

"He better knock it off," the umpire said. He dug around in his little hip bag and plopped the resulting ball firmly into the pocket of Pudge's glove. "He keeps this up, it ain't gonna get easier."

Pudge jerked his chin down once in a minimalist version of a nod to show that he understood. "Maybe I go talk to him."

"You do that," the umpire said, dangerously agreeable.

Pudge trotted out towards Beckett, telling the corner infielders to stay at their bases with one quick left-right sweep of his eyes. He was sweating profusely in the humid Florida weather (hotter in Texas, maybe, but the air was so much drier there) and badly wanted to reach up and wipe it away from his forehead, but doing so would amount to showing weakness in front of Beckett during a game. Pudge had learned that this was, in general, not a good idea.

When he reached the mound he immediately grabbed the front of Beckett's jersey to keep him from turning away, although he tried to make it look like a gentle catcherly chest pat for the cameras. "Ey. _Hey_ ," he repeated, until Beckett looked at him. "Stop showin' up the ump, or it will get harder for a strike call."

"Whatever," Beckett muttered. "You don't know that. I get mad at his bull- _shit_ , I'm gonna be mad, I'm gonna _act_ mad."

Pudge shook his head. "He will do it, he say as much."

"He… he can't do that! That's ill- _ee_ -gull!"

"He says it to _help_ you," Pudge said. He resisted the urge to grab Beckett and instead tried to telegraph urgency through the one hand already warningly braced on his chest, trying to physically will him to understand. "He sees a kid who do not respect him, he could so easy jus' start to call pitches tight, but he think, this kid does not know, I will give him a chance, I will take a time out of my very busy umpire life to tell him how it is. He don' have to do this, it is to be a help, out of the kindness of his tiny umpire heart, you see?"

"M'not a damn kid," Beckett muttered. "I been up a year an' some."

"You sound jus' like me when I was your age," Pudge said, exasperated. The point was not the kid thing, but it was just what he would have seized upon ten years ago, so it served him right that it would be what Beckett immediately seized upon as well.

"Really." Beckett looked wary, somewhere between intrigued and offended.

Pudge nodded and patted him firmly on the chest. " _Sí_ , really. So listen to a dude who was there, and has plenty of years on top of that. No more stompin' around a mound, big obvious sigh, glare in at nice umpire man, jus' stop, OK? Keep it onna inside, throw your glove at a wall after the game, whatever, OK?"

Beckett glared at him. Pudge stared back calmly. With many other pitchers he would have gotten angry, but Redmond had told him early on that that sort of thing only fueled Beckett's irate fire, and experience had borne that warning out. After almost a full minute, during which time Pudge could practically _feel_ the umpire's gaze on his back, Beckett cut his eyes down to his own glove and chuffed out a pissy little breath. Pudge patted him on the chest again, more gently, and trotted back to his patch of dirt behind home plate.

They were up by five after the eighth inning, so Jack McKeon, who had taken over the manager's position when Torborg was fired in May, brought Urbina in for the ninth. Pudge did not call anything fancy, Urbina threw reasonably well, and the side went down in order. Pudge peeled his mask off of his helmet and tucked it under his arm, wiping an armband across his forehead, squeegeeing the sweat off as best he could. He was already thinking about cold showers in the locker room, nice clean sprays of water.

The victory lineup was half-formed by the time he got to the mound. He gave Urbina a casual smack on the lips, high-fived Derek Lee, accepted a sharp thwack between the shoulder blades from Juan Encarnacion, and was manhandled in various other ways as the rest of the team passed by, until finally he got to McKeon, who shook his hand with a gruff, "OK, that was good, uh, _bueno_ ," and waved him into the dugout, where the steps leading down to the cool air conditioned clubhouse were beckoning.

Beckett cornered him after they had showered. Pudge had almost been expecting it, and was not particularly surprised, which seemed to upset Beckett even more for some reason.

"The fuck was that?" Beckett asked.

"Look." Pudge carefully threaded the buckle of his belt, taking a moment to collect his thoughts before he turned around. "Look," he repeated. "You cannot pull shit like that. Don't act like you are all a martyr here, OK? I am a catcher, I am _your_ catcher, you act up on a field, I call you out on your shit. You don' like I do it durin' a game, fine, you don't act up durin' a game. I will say it honest, what you pull today, that was shit I don't even see from a kid who throws his very first game. I do not blame the ump one bit, he has every kind of a right to get mad when you act like that, and I do not hesitate one bit to do again what I do today. _Comprende_?"

"I… what… you… that wasn't what I meant," Beckett sputtered. "I meant… at the end… the end of the game…"

There was a pause. "That is what we call a ninth inning," Pudge said carefully. "It is what you get after the firs' eight innings are done. Three outs for each half. Usually it is the last inning of a game." He frowned. "I know you are young an' all but I expect you to know that."

"That's not. I." Beckett was turning decidedly red. " _After_ the end. Durin' the lineup, when everyone's doin' the high fives and shit, and you went up to… Urbina… and, and…"

Pudge made an encouraging little gesture with one hand. Beckett screwed up his forehead so that it became a sea of horizontal wrinkles; this was plainly costing him a great deal of effort. "And you… you," He lowered his voice. "You _made out with him_."

Years of American pro ball had familiarized Pudge with the idiom, but it still took him a moment to recognize it in this context. "I… what?" Beckett grimaced and scuffed at the clubhouse floor with his sneaker, looking down. Pudge thought back; he had not _made out_ with Urbina since that first and last encounter, when Urbina joined the team; Beckett could not have possibly known about that, and so it could not have been what he meant. After another few agonizing seconds of staring at Beckett's now brilliantly crimson face, though, he got it.

"You mean… after the game, he come up, I give him a little--" here he made a kind of _mwah_ kissing moue. "Sí?" Beckett nodded, glancing up at Pudge defiantly. Pudge shook his head. "That is not 'making out'. Is nothing, is jus' like, a bump of a fist, no big deal."

"Uh, that ain't just like bumpin' fists. What, they do shit that different in your country?" Beckett was at least doing Pudge the bare courtesy of keeping his voice low. "I mean, what, seriously, where you guys come from, you just… go around kissin' other guys?"

"OK, for the first, me and Ugie, we are not from the same country." Beckett shrugged, now looking uneasy. Pudge took a step away from his locker, towards Beckett, and jammed his fists into his own hips, which he knew made him look a bit like a sullen squashy tree stump, but he did not really care. " _Hey_. You do not shrug and look at other shit when your catcher talk to you. I am from Puerto Rico, Ugie is from Venezuela, OK, Venezuela is a big stupid country onna top part of Sout' America, Puerto Rico is _una isla_ , also it is _part of the United State of America_. You are from Texas, no? Is not like you come from a place wit' no Latinos, what is this, you suddenly come over stupid?"

"Look. I just… nevermind." Beckett was rubbing the back of his neck now, not looking at Pudge at all. "You don't see dudes fuckin' kissin' on the field, OK, it was weird, I thought… just nevermind."

"You thought what?" Pudge asked in a dangerous sort of voice. He took another step towards Beckett.

Beckett gave him one fleeting, wide-eyed look, backing up a step and looking to the side, but their teammates were all occupied with their own post-game routines, no doubt assuming, if they noticed Beckett and Pudge at all, that they were simply having it out over some little quirk of pitching. "I just, OK, OK, I just thought, if you were… if you and, and him were… y'know… you shouldn't. Ah. You shouldn't do that on the field, is all. You guys should be, uh, more. Um. More careful." The look on his face indicated that he might have wanted to say more, but he swallowed the words down, still very red about the ears.

Pudge let that hang in the air for a moment. "There is nothin' for us… for me and Ugie to be careful about."

Beckett looked back at him sidelong. " _Nothin'_ for _us_? You put that pretty careful. Nothin' for _just you_ t'be careful 'bout?"

Pudge shrugged. The flush was started to recede from Beckett's face. He shifted a little, maybe about to say something again, but he stopped when Redmond suddenly appeared next to him, moving with surprising stealth for such a clumsy-looking catcher. "Everything's good over here, guys, right?"

"Great," Pudge said, after waiting to see if Beckett was going to reply. "Everything is fine."

"That's wonderful. That's really a beautiful thing. I'm taking some of the guys out to get a few drinks, the ones who're actually old enough to drink, right--" Cabrera slunk by in the background, looking sulky-- "are you fantastically great and fine folks in?"

"Probably jus' goin' home. Long day, you know."

Redmond nodded soberly. "Absolutely. I am, you know, full of understanding. Tell the lovely Maribel I say hi, right?"

Pudge stared at him a beat too long before nodding once, sharply, turning to dig his cell phone and wallet out of his locker, not waiting to see Redmond leave, not waiting to see Beckett's reaction, if he even had one. Fuck Redmond. He hadn't ever said more than five words at a time to Maribel, he could have only barely known who she was. Fuck him for sticking his nose in where it didn't belong, fuck his idea of being helpful. Fuck.

**

It did not come up again, at least not in so many words. A few days later Beckett casually mentioned something about a club after the game; Pudge went assuming most of the team would be there, but found it was only him and Beckett. The same thing happened a week after that, and then again several days after _that_. Then they were on the road, and when Beckett asked if he'd like to go try out such-and-such a Chicago restaurant that he had heard good things about, Pudge was wholly unsurprised to find out it was going to be just the two of them.

Urbina teased him endlessly about it. //What,// Pudge protested, //I can't have _friends_?//

//Friends? He doesn't even speak Spanish!//

//So what? I speak English.//

// _Sort of_.//

//Fuck you, and fuck the crusty, saggy-titted whore-mother you rode in on,// Pudge muttered.

Urbina patted him on the cheek. //Darling, you always say the sweetest things.//

Maybe it was a kind of stupid, old man's vanity-- Pudge was 31, short and, well, _pudgy_ ; Beckett was freshly 23 and in the kind of shape that made the groupies pretend to swoon-- but he liked it. He liked that Beckett sought him out, wanted to spend time with him away from the field. Beckett seemed to touch him more away from the park, little brushes of his hand, leaning an elbow into Pudge's shoulder to get his attention in the darkness of a club, squeezing up next to him in a crowd. And he seemed to _look_ at Pudge more too. On the field he was always looking at a million things at once, keeping the batter in the corner of his eye always, watching the umpires, the coaches, the crowd. Away from all that, he was surprisingly good at ignoring waitresses and bartenders and the ever-optimistic groupies. If Pudge found a little pleasant fodder for his imagination-- his _fantasias_ \-- in Beckett's friendship, well, as Urbina would say, there was no danger in just looking. It was only dangerous to _do_ something, and he had no intention of doing anything.

But Beckett was young and headstrong and convinced that everything he wanted was his by rights. He was curious, not afraid of much, and he _did_ seem to like Pudge more than anyone else on the team. So, in retrospect, it was not terribly surprising that something should happen, but Pudge was so busy determinedly Not Doing Anything to Beckett that he was completely and totally caught off guard when Beckett Did Something all on his own.

They had been winning more than they'd been losing, and the whole team had been infected with a sort of reckless giddiness: the stress of playing well and staying competitive within the division was rising by the day, but the euphoria of winning was pervasive too. Pudge caught McKeon whistling to himself before the postgame press conference, some days, and some of the younger rookies were getting so excitable that there was talk of banishing all the coffee pots from the clubhouse. It was the sort of clubhouse atmosphere that could so easily lead a young player to do something exuberant and very, very stupid.

Beckett, in the middle of this stretch, threw a complete game three-hitter against a very good Braves team. Pudge caught the game, and Beckett did not shake him off once, which was quite possibly a first; Beckett _always_ shook him off at least a few times per game, it was some kind of dominance thing with him.

In this one, though, they had the same ideas about the Braves hitters, the same understanding of the pace of the game, what pitches needed to be thrown at what times. Pudge did not glance back at the dugout once for a signal from McKeon or a National League hint from Redmond; everything he needed to know was right there on the mound. It was certainly the first time, since he had joined the Marlins, that he had experienced anything like the kind of simpatico pitching relationship that he had had with Ryan or Rogers.

Afterwards, downstairs in the clubhouse, Beckett grabbed Pudge by the arm and dragged him into the video room, eyes glossed over in a way that made Pudge nervous. Beckett was breathing hard, the fingers on his right hand twitching like he was still feeling for seams. As soon as the video room door swung shut he shoved Pudge up against a solid wall of outdated VHS tape bricks with a dull clunk, and kissed him hard.

Pudge shoved him off. " _Madre de Dios_ , what the fuck! Are you crazy?" Beckett pinned him to the wall again by his shoulders. " _No_ ," Pudge hissed. "Down, down, bad pitcher! Don't be _stupid_ , the whole team is right here. This is… we are _not_ going to do this wit' a whole team right here."

Beckett gave him a look, clearly translatable as _What are you, some kinda pussy?_ Pudge squeezed his eyes shut momentarily, squirmed out from under Beckett's big hands and stomped firmly out of the room.

Five minutes later Beckett was back at his own locker, changing into his street clothes with aggressive, jerky little motions. His jeans were slung low on his hips, exposing a strip of clean white boxer briefs, his chest bare except for the spot where his favorite hemp pitching necklace hit the hollow of his throat as he deliberated over a shirt. He looked stupidly good. Pudge could not believe how good he looked, and to think, he could have been touching _that_ , right now. What was he, some kind of pussy?

But someone had to be the adult around here, or the clubhouse would dissolve into chaos. It was essentially Pudge or nothing, when it came to adulthood on the Marlins. Beckett was just a punchy, rogue kid. And, _Dios_ , such a kid, what the fuck did he even mean by that, throwing a game that good and finishing it off by trying to jump down Pudge's throat?

Beckett had his little one-city girlfriends. He talked about them with the other guys; Pudge was pretty sure he had heard Beckett and Penny debating the merits of shaved versus unshaved pussy in the dugout just a few days before. Of course Pudge himself was married. He fucked the occasional groupie. But that… that was _him_. Beckett was just a kid, he could not possibly be like _him_.

Beckett was giving Pudge a look, from halfway across the clubhouse, that could only be described as _smoldering_. There was no misinterpreting that. Whatever Beckett might or might not be, he was attractive and good at pitching, and he was, apparently, interested. Pudge was not that strong.

"You live by yourself?" Pudge asked quietly, sidling up to Beckett once they were both fully dressed and the likelihood of either one of them doing something monumentally foolish where McKeon had a chance of seeing it seemed reduced. Beckett nodded. Too quick, too eager. Twenty-three years old. Pudge was going to have to keep reminding himself.

"OK," Pudge said, "this is what we do. Wait 'til mos' everyone else is gone, you get in your car, I get in my car, I follow you out. We go to your place. We… we talk about this. OK?"

"Talk. Right."

"This is not a joke," Pudge warned. "Talk, yes. Maybe… we see. But this, no, you cannot jus' jump me inna lockerroom like some little U Miami sorority _chica_ and not say a word, things go to shit when you do that. I been around, OK, I know."

For a moment it looked like Beckett was going to protest, was going to treat this like just another mound conference, where anyone questioning his understanding of baseball would be subject to his immediate scathing scorn, but he ducked his head and nodded, almost sheepishly. It was the first time Pudge could remember seeing Beckett admit that he might, just possibly, be out of his depth.

**

As soon as he walked into Beckett's apartment, it became clear that Beckett had done some reassessment on the way over. Instead of holding back and waiting to see what Pudge would do, which was _what they had essentially agreed upon_ , he immediately cornered Pudge in the living room (or TV room, or whatever the bachelor rookie apartment equivalent of that room was) and tugged with fetchingly intent concentration at Pudge's belt.

Those big hands… but no, hell no, he was _not_ going to let Beckett derail him that quickly. "Talk! I said we would talk!"

"Uh hunh," Beckett mumbled. He was looking at Pudge's mouth, but he didn't seem to be focusing on what Pudge was saying.

Pudge grabbed both of Beckett's wrists, trying to hold him off, at least slow him down. "Since when do you even like boys? I only ever see you wit' women."

"I only ever see _you_ with women, outside'a Urbina," Beckett said, not nearly as mockingly as he could have. "Maybe I got to thinkin' I should give it a try. Maybe I seen you makin' out with the relievers, I got curious."

"You did not see me make out wit' any reliever," Pudge shot back. "But me, this is what I do, for years and years. You, all of a sudden? And you come with this to _me_ , of all people, why?"

Beckett blinked. "Years and years? You been… you been doin' shit with guys for years?"

This seemed too obvious to even address, so Pudge ignored it, taking advantage of Beckett's sudden stillness to shove him onto the nearby couch. He underestimated his own relative strength and ended up on top of Beckett, braced stiffly over him, but in that position he could both keep Beckett mostly pinned down and retain his attention, so it was not necessarily a bad thing.

"Why?" he repeated. "Why me, why now, why all of this?" He could feel the heat of Beckett's body practically radiating up off the couch at him, but they were going to do at least a minimum of talking about this, even if it killed him.

"Dunno." Beckett looked away. "You didn't seem like you'd get pissed? And, like, today. During the game. There was… with you, and me, there was a thing."

"A thing."

"A thing, a thing, I dunno. Fuck. A _thing_ , with the pitches, and me throwin' 'em and you callin' 'em, and how good it went... and it was _so_ good, and I got to feelin' like… and it was a _thing_. You tellin' me you don't know?"

"A weird baseball thing, you cannot explain no more than dat." Pudge sighed. He released Beckett's hands and settled down, sitting on Beckett's thighs instead of hovering tensely over them. "Do I know. Sí, I guess." Beckett looked shocked, like Pudge was unexpectedly letting him get away with something. Maybe he was.

"I still think this is a bad idea," he added. Beckett had put his hands on Pudge's hips and was squeezing lightly, rhythmically, like he'd never touched anyone with an appreciable amount of fat on their frame before and was near-hypnotized by the sensation. "This, wit' a teammate, this will always be a bad idea."

"Nah. It'll be good, it'll be, man, it'll be good. I trust you." Beckett slid one hand around to the small of Pudge's back, just grazing the very top of his ass, still hesitant, still acting like he was getting away with something and he could not quite believe it.

Pudge sighed, leaned forward to press a nuzzling kiss to the side of Beckett's head. "Yeah. That is what I am afraid of."

**

In order for Beckett to count something as sex, Pudge quickly learned, it had to be as energetic as possible. Pudge had restricted their first few encounters, Post Braves Game, to kissing and mutual touching (plenty satisfying to _him_ ), both to give this thing, whatever it was, some semblance of order, and also to give Beckett a chance to back out if it got too weird. It was not too weird, apparently: Beckett had wanted to immediately get into what he considered proper sex.

"Sex in the ass is not the only kind of sex," Pudge said, exasperated. "And you cannot jus' jump right into it."

"I'm _aware_ ," Beckett said. "You think I never fucked a lady up the pooper before?"

"Oh yes, that is the mos' sexy thing you could have said. _Pooper_."

"Well sorry, I don't know the word in Spanish." Beckett reached down, getting a good handful of Pudge's ass. He never seemed to get tired of it, which was kind of funny, because Pudge had never noticed any particularly impressive asses on the girls Beckett picked up. "Do you want me to put it pretty or somethin'? Do I gotta do some kinda demonstration to prove I know how to get a butt ready for my dick?"

"I'm in _una relación_ wit' a ten year old. _Dios, ayúdame_."

"I dunno what that means, but it sounds hot," Beckett rumbled, rubbing up against Pudge.

June turned into July, July into August. The humidity in Miami kept climbing, spiking up to a new peak every time Pudge thought it had finally reached a plateau. The kids got out of school and Maribel started bringing them around to games; she always wanted to sit in a box, where there was air conditioning, but half the time Dereck managed to talk her into watching the game from the front row. It had been a long, long time since Pudge had spent an entire summer somewhere other than Texas.

The Marlins were, improbably, playing well, but Beckett was having a hard time getting wins. It was bad luck, mostly, and bad run support; Beckett himself was doing a good job, his curveball as smart as any Pudge had seen. Still Beckett insisted on taking each loss like a personal affront, becoming frustrated, and then wanting to work his frustration out, usually on Pudge.

It was not a casual one-off, as it had been with Urbina. Nor was it a fraught one-off, like it had been with Ryan. It was not a zero-expectations one-off like the encounters he occasionally had with groupies, because Beckett _did_ have expectations: that they would meet up again, that they would do more than they had done the previous time, and if they couldn't do more, that they would do whatever it was they'd done before harder, faster, in a new and more challenging position. It was not enough for Pudge to fuck Beckett lying flat on the bed; Beckett wanted to be fucked bent over in the shower, braced on three different surfaces while Pudge slipped and slid around trying to keep his footing. Or he wanted to fuck standing up, with Pudge's legs wrapped around his waist; a position that Beckett insisted was "totally possible," but Pudge suspected he had never seen done outside of porn, or at least not with anyone who weighed as much as Pudge did.

Pudge actually had to sit him down, explain to him why having sex in the clubhouse was a bad idea-- mixing work and sex (as if they weren't already), two guys having sex around a bunch of teammates who might not take so kindly to that, sex where there were cameras, a whole laundry list of very good reasons. Beckett listened politely, nodded along, then suggested that he could steal a set of keys so that they could sneak in after hours and have sex on the actual field. Explaining why that was _also_ a bad idea took another ten harrowing minutes out of Pudge's life.

These were not problems that he ever had with Maribel, or indeed with groupies, but of course there were compensations. Those big brown Beckett eyes locked tight on him during a game, ignoring hecklers in the crowd and increasingly fractious umpires. The jolt in the pit of his stomach when a particularly good Beckett fastball came screaming into his glove, the batter swinging emptily for visualized fences-- the knowledge of what that abbreviated Beckett fist pump on the mound meant for him later.

What Beckett might have lacked in experience (with men; even without knowing any of the details, Pudge had no illusions about Beckett's track record with women), he made up for in sheer enthusiasm, and an utter lack of shame that Pudge would have never, ever, not once in a million seasons expected from a presumed straight-but-experimenting ballplayer. Beckett liked holding Pudge down and squeezing his ass and fucking him hard, but he also grew stupidly proud of his blowjobs and would kneel happily at Pudge's feet for an entire Sportscenter hour, licking and sucking and trying out ridiculous contortions of his tongue until he found the specific sequence that would set Pudge to hysterical swearing.

"You are goin' to kill me," Pudge groaned. They were in the middle of a road series, and so he was flat on his back on what was nominally Beckett's hotel bed, getting in what time he could before they went back to Florida. Beckett was draped over him, two fingers angled up inside, thumb pressing at the back of his balls. "You goin' to fuck, or play wit' me until I die?"

"Roll over an' grab the headboard," Beckett suggested. His voice was probably supposed to be silky, seductive, but instead he just sounded eager.

"Dios, why you always got to make it more complicated, jus' do it like dis."

Beckett opened his mouth to protest. Pudge reached down and grabbed his own cock, stroking it firmly, a gesture that felt a thousand times better with something in his ass, and would feel better still if Beckett would replace his fingers with a slightly larger part of his anatomy. Beckett closed his mouth and looked down at Pudge with his eyes narrowed.

"You're doin' that on purpose."

Pudge shifted his hips a little, driving his cock up through the circle of his fingers, gently jostling Beckett's hand. "Sí, usually when a dude has a hand on his dick, it is on a purpose."

"I mean, to make me wanna do it your way insteada… ah, fuck it," Beckett muttered. "Where'd I leave that lube?"

" _Romántico_ as always," Pudge sighed. But he was not really complaining.

**

On the road he made a habit of rooming with Beckett. This was not unusual: the Marlins were too cheap to get individual rooms for everyone, even though most of the rest of the league had given up the roommate system years ago. And nobody objected to a catcher rooming with a young pitcher. Certainly there was some talk among the coaches that he ought to be rotating, staying with a different kid pitcher on every trip, but as the season wore on and Beckett got stronger, kept pitching better, that sort of talk tailed off. Something was working, and there was not a coach on the team who would want to be responsible for screwing it up.

They were in Pittsburgh, late August, where the last of the afternoon's sunlight threw the yellow bridges over the Allegheny into high relief. The Pirates had shut them out that night, which was distinctly unnerving. They had won ten more games than the Pirates at that point in the season. They were second in the division, leading the race for the wild card. The Pirates were fourth in their division and falling fast: not the kind of team to which they should be losing.

Pudge came back to the hotel surly, having gone 0-for-4 in the game. Penny had not pitched well, and had complained to McKeon about the pitches Pudge had been calling, even though Pudge knew damn well that the pitch calling was not the problem. Penny had only gone four innings. There had been four innings of relief pitching to get through and he had called those just fine, no runs and hardly any hits, the problem was _clearly_ Penny, and what was he supposed to do? There was only so much he _could_ do; he couldn't magically create good pitching where none existed. If Penny was so damn afraid of Jason Bay, that was his own problem, and had nothing to do with Pudge.

Seemingly as soon as he crossed the threshold into his hotel room, grumbling irately to himself over the conversation he'd had to have with McKeon that had kept him at the ballpark so late, his phone started to ring. He was inclined to ignore it at first, in that foul a mood, but the name that came up on his screen was one he hadn't seen in months: Rogers, who was busy working his way through a season in Minnesota, of all godforsaken places.

"Hey," he said, pausing for Rogers' answering _hey_. "What's wrong?" Because there was something in the way Rogers had returned his greeting that made him certain something _was_ wrong.

"Nothin'. Baseball," Rogers said, evasively. "Just thought… I just wanted to call. What's wrong with you?"

"Nothin'. Why would you think there is?"

"You sound kinda upset, is all."

"I say, what, ten words to you?" Pudge grumbled, ignoring the fact that he had done the same thing to Rogers in even fewer words. Beckett was out with some of the younger guys, at a bar or a club or something; Pudge didn't know. Not back at the hotel yet, anyways. "Is nothin'. Just, Penny blame me for some shit, he say I call today's game bad. I hate he say that to the coaches, I just don' need that _mierda_ here so late inna season."

"Nah. You, callin' a whole game bad? I don't think so, ain't no coach gonna think so."

"How would you know? You watch? You get a Marlins game on TV out there?"

"Well… no," Rogers admitted. Pudge snorted out a laugh. "Whatever, I know you, I know how you play."

"Ay, shut up. You don't even… really, why did you call?"

Rogers sighed heavily into the phone. "What, I gotta have a _reason_? I dunno, I just hadn't talked to you in forever. And maybe I had a shitty-ass start today and wanted to talk to someone who wasn't on this fuckin' trainwreck of a team."

"Ah ha. Pierzynski not workin' good wit' you?" AJ Pierzynski was the starting catcher for the Twins. Pudge assumed he had caught the latest game.

"You don't even want me to get into Pierzynski. He's…" Rogers trailed off, at a loss for words to describe precisely what Pierzynski was. "He's not you," he finally said, as if that was some kind of actual answer, as if that was something other than what he had said about every catcher he'd played with since Pudge. "But hey, fuck, I didn't call just to bitch about my shitty squad, I called to get distracted from my shitty squad. You guys are playin' good, right? You're on the road now?"

"Pittsburgh, sí. We play OK for now. The Braves, they are in top of the division, but we do OK. Maybe a wild card. Lots of injuries, you know, these pitchers. One thing after another, it feels like."

Then of course Rogers had to have the run-down on who had been injured, and how, and when, and how long the rehab had taken, if it was even finished. This was a morbid kind of pitcher's curiosity with which Pudge was very familiar; they all liked hearing about what had gone wrong with other guys, part schadenfreude-esque happiness that it wasn't them and part warning for a possible future. Halfway through his description of AJ Burnett's weird continued refusal to watch a game from the dugout following his surgery and the various theories that had sprung up around the clubhouse to explain this, there was a loud thump at the door, followed by a softer thump lower down. "Hang on," he said to Rogers, who just grunted.

When he opened the door he was not particularly surprised to see Beckett there on the floor, leaning against the doorjamb with his knees up, his arms looped loosely around them. He nudged Beckett with a toe just to see if it would tip him over. Beckett tilted his head up and grinned sloppily, all teeth and goatee and black hair going in twenty different directions.

"Forgot mah key," he slurred, sliding off the doorjamb and stopping up against one of Pudge's legs.

Pudge sighed. "OK. C'mon." He underhanded the cell phone onto his bed, reached down to get both of his hands under Beckett's arms so that he could haul him to his feet. He just barely managed to lever Beckett up onto the other bed (lifting with his legs, not his back, like he was in the weight room and the trainer was yelling at him). Beckett made a sweeping attempt to grab at him, but Pudge dodged this easily and retrieved his phone.

"Sorry. Roommate is _bien bebido_. These kids, can't hold the alcohol."

"You gotta pair up on the road? I didn't know there were teams still doin' that. Who's the roomie?" Rogers asked, suspiciously interested.

"Nobody, is jus' one o'these kid pitchers. You wouldn' know--"

"Sure I would, you think just 'cause you're in the NL I don't keep track? Gimme some credit, fucker. It ain't Penny, I'm guessin' that much."

"Dios, no. Jus' this kid, Beckett--"

" _Josh_ Beckett? The kid with the blisters? And the elbow? And the strikeouts? Yeah, that's Beckett, isn't it, with the whole Texas thing, right--"

"Didn't know you knew so much about a Marlin," Pudge muttered.

"--and the goatee," Rogers finished. "Huh. Pretty big guy, isn't he? Pretty good pitcher?"

"I guess… what?"

"Hey, nothin'. You room with him _all_ the time?"

Pudge let himself keel over backwards onto his bed and dropped his free hand down over his eyes. "Why?"

"No reason at all," Rogers said, in a rather unconvincingly innocent tone of voice. "This is an excellent distraction from Twins-shit, you know."

"I do not know what you are talking about," Pudge said, very even, he thought, but Beckett chose just that moment to get his legs working again long enough to stagger over to Pudge's bed and flop down on top of him. He squeaked, surprised by the sudden weight, and tried to push Beckett back off, but Beckett interpreted that as groping and got excited, writhing his entire body up against Pudge's.

"Josh," Pudge hissed, shoving ineffectually at various parts of Beckett, "no, I'm onna phone, _Josh_." Laughter spilled out from the phone, a little tinny with distance. He managed to twist away far enough to get the phone back up to his face. Beckett curled up around his lower body, long limbs absurdly out-sized for the task, and nuzzled at the hem of Pudge's shirt.

"You got a _type_ , buddy," Rogers said. "You gotta be careful."

"I do not. Fuck you." Pudge put a hand on Beckett's head to keep him from working his way upwards, where he would be even more of a nuisance.

"I'm serious. I mean, me, this is funny, but what if it hadn't been me on the phone just now, hey? What if it was, was, I dunno, your agent, or manager, or _Maribel_?" That was a low blow, and Pudge winced at it. "I mean, like, what if it was your kid callin' to tell you 'bout his day at school? Oh, daddy's just wrestlin' with his friends?"

"Is like midnight, Dereck is not gonna call," Pudge said, "but I _am_ careful. It is not like everybody know, OK, you don't hear this in the, the media, you don't hear it inna locker room. I am not stupid, you know that."

"I just found out, didn't I?" Rogers pointed out. "I ain't some kinda super detective Inspector Gadget freak. If I can figure it out..."

"No. You, it is different," Pudge said. Rogers made a gentle noise of protest. "You are. You know me better'n any, any Inspector Gadgets, you have _una ventaja_."

"Maribel knows you pretty good," Rogers said, quietly.

Beckett had gotten the hem of Pudge's shirt shoved up and was snuffling at his waist. Pudge squirmed a little, just to see if he could get free easily, but Beckett had him well wrapped up and did not seem inclined to move. "Well, OK. She knows I… I mean, with groupies, she is not blind or stupid, she mus' know how it is."

"Groupies are one thing. This is another. _Team_ , Pudge…"

"Yeah, but if she finds out… she would not be happy, I don' think. I mean, I know. But it is not _so_ so bad. I mean, no worse than if it was a groupie. I would not talk about a groupie either, is jus', like… polite. She don' bring it up, I do nothing to make her _have_ to bring it up." It was deeply weird to talk about this while Beckett was warm and drunk and affectionate, _right there_ , working with a cheerful drunken lack of coordination at the button fly on Pudge's jeans.

"I think you'd be surprised," Rogers said. "What the wives know 'bout the difference, with team, that kinda thing." And wasn't _that_ interesting? But something in Rogers' voice was clanging alarms in Pudge's head, warning him off of it, don't you fucking _dare_ ask.

They sat in silence for a moment, Pudge chewing over the whole of the conversation, Rogers presumably backing away from the edge of whatever precipice they'd just happened upon. It was like old times; he could have sat in comfortable silence with Rogers for another ten minutes, but Beckett had Pudge's fly halfway to open and was trying to pull the pants right off of him, although the significant volume of Pudge's ass meant that the jeans were going nowhere until one of them got the fly the rest of the way undone.

"I will be careful," he said. "I am not sayin' that I am not careful now, you know. But even more careful. If it will help you to sleep at night."

"Oh, yeah, OK, it's all about me." He could almost hear Rogers' smile through the phone. "Whatever. I don't know why I even bother with your dumbass shit. Go back to your underage little strike-thrower--"

"He is 23!" Pudge said, laughing, scandalized. "That is four years older than me when I…" He stopped and let the sentence die off, abruptly horrified at what he had been about to say. They did not-- _nobody_ talked about him and Ryan.

There was a beat while they both let the fake-adrenaline rush of nearly mentioning it pass. "Yeah, well, you were jailbait back then too," Rogers said, just barely skirting the issue.

"I am so done wit' this talk," Pudge said. "Go back to your _Pierzynski_."

"Go back to your _twink_."

" _Madre de Dios_ \--"

Rogers was laughing as he hung up. Pudge dropped his phone to the carpet in fond disgust and scrubbed his fingers through the wild hair at the top of Beckett's head, only to discover that Beckett had fallen asleep, all curled up around Pudge's legs, and was drooling onto his stomach.

**

The last game of the regular season was such a non-event that Pudge didn't even play-- Redmond got the start, and was weirdly gleeful about it, saying things like, "Hey, gotta get my cuts in while I can, you're gonna get all those playoff starts, right?", nudging Pudge with his elbow. Willis pitched and got on base twice, a walk and a single. After the hit he pointed into the dugout with a goofy grin. Pudge pointed back at him with both hands.

"What's that about?" Beckett asked, looking sidelong down the bench.

Pudge smirked. "That? Hittin'? I teach him everythin' he know."

"Teach me some'a that," Beckett grumbled. Pudge looked back out at the field, pretending to pay attention to Willis' lead off the base so that Beckett wouldn't see his smirk evolving into bigger grin. Beckett was a pitcher through and through; he was _terrible_ with a bat.

Two days into the future the schedule called for Beckett to pitch in the first game of the Division Series. It would be Beckett's first trip to the playoffs. If Pudge was managing the team, _he_ would have found a way to stagger the rotation so that Beckett's very first postseason experience was not also his first postseason start-- he would have preferred to let Beckett watch someone else, Penny or Redman or something, make a start beforehand-- but of course he didn't have any real say in the matter, and so here was Beckett, biting the fingernails of his left hand in the dugout and compulsively knocking his heels against the concrete floor until Juan Encarnacion had had enough and screamed at him to knock it the fuck off, _hijo de puta_.

When the inning ended Redmond sat down next to Beckett with an armful of catcher's gear, scuffed shinguards with straps so thoroughly stained by sweat that their original teal color had darkened almost to black. "Settle down, yeah?" he said, mildly, bending over to work his leg into the zone marked out by the straps. "Makin' people nervous, Josh."

"Fuck 'em," Beckett muttered. He had his left thumb in his mouth, worrying at the nail with his teeth.

Redmond tugged at the foot-plate of his left shinguard, which was stuck in an upwardly cocked position. Outfielders were already leaving the dugout, running out to their positions. "You'll be fine. We know the Giants, right? And being all fucked-up about it today, that's not gonna help you come gameday, right? Uh, a little help?" Pudge rolled his eyes and got up to help Redmond unstick his shinguard, something that required an unreasonable amount of undignified tugging. Beckett watched with an indecipherable expression on his face.

"Dude, _c'mon_!" Willis yelled. He was at the top of the dugout steps, windmilling an arm towards the mound. Pitcher needing a catcher: Pudge was up and halfway to the steps before he remembered that he was not playing that day.

"You're gonna make me look bad, Rodriguez," Redmond said under his breath, crooking a smile in Pudge's direction as he passed. Pudge rolled his eyes and turned his back on the dugout steps, looking to where Beckett hunched over himself on the bench, shard of thumbnail twisted and white between his teeth.

**

Beckett lost the first game of the Division Series, but it wasn't his fault. Seven innings, one run, just two hits, the both of them singles. He walked five Giants, which turned out to be his downfall, but still-- only one run in his postseason debut. Pudge was absurdly, almost viciously proud of him, but Beckett was not having any of it, not with Jason Schmidt out-pitching him at almost every turn: a complete game, with _no_ runs, and _no_ walks. Beckett had been good, but Schmidt had been _amazingly_ good, and in Beckett's weird little mind the fact that he had not been as good as the opposing starter was the only fact that mattered.

Only three Marlins got on base at all. Pudge was one of them, but that didn't mean anything when it came to calming Beckett down. He couldn't spend all day and night soothing Beckett; he had to get Penny ready for Game 2, he had to talk things over with the relievers, he had to make sure he knew what approaches he wanted to take at the plate against Sidney Ponson, the Giants' Game 2 starter. He did not have the luxury of sulking that a starting pitcher had.

They won the second game (seven pitchers, and so many runs, fourteen between the two teams, the kind of game that was hell on catchers). Penny only lasted four innings again, and Pavano had somehow vultured a win despite only pitching for two outs. Encarnacion had homered. Coming back to tie a best-of-three series was enough to make the rest of the team fuzzily happy, inclined to over-tip at the unfamiliar San Francisco bars, but Beckett refused to come out to celebrate.

"I will not stay in and pat your back all night long if you are goin' to sit here all _malhumorado_. I am not your fuckin' baby-sitter," Pudge spat, throwing up his hands in exasperation.

Beckett sank further into the pillows of his hotel bed. All the lights were off except for the light in the bathroom, where Pudge had been getting ready, and the light of the TV, which was tuned to an old Indiana Jones movie.

"Didn't ask for no damn baby-sitter," Beckett muttered. He did not move his eyes away from the TV screen.

At the bar, nobody asked where Beckett was. It was possible that nobody even noticed his absence. Penny bought a round for the whole team as thanks for bailing him out, and if he still glared a bit at Pudge when the bartender slid his bottle over, well, Pudge was not going to dwell on it.

Some of them, like Cabrera, were still technically too young to be there, and the possibility of getting into the kind of trouble that could keep them out of games was a good deterrent for the more obvious kinds of stupid behavior. Pudge was not so worried that he felt he had to watch the kids closely, keep track of their locations at all times, run interference with bouncers and other patrons: the kind of stuff he _did_ make a habit of doing on roadtrips during the regular season. He let himself drink a little more than usual, a little more liquor than beer. He kept ordering drinks with a lot of fruit in them, sugary stuff that disguised the alcohol so that it went down deceptively easy, and apparently this was funny-- Urbina, who was drinking straight scotch, kept sniggering indelicately into his glass and nudging whichever Marlin happened to be sitting nearest so that they too could get a laugh at Pudge's latest beverage.

Urbina had been kind of meanly teasing, lately. Maybe he should be worried, or at least more interested in paying attention to the phenomenon, but Pudge was too strung out on baseball in October to bother trying to figure it out.

He staggered back to the hotel room late, ricocheting off the walls and giggling quietly to himself, glad to be fat and padded for once, because he could hit a wall or two and come up not much worse for the wear. Beckett had fallen asleep with the TV on, its flickering light making his slack face look awake for a moment, optical illusions faking a flutter of his eyes. Pudge crawled in next to him with all of his clothes on, and woke up to Beckett bitching about the mark Pudge's belt buckle had left on his hip.

They kept playing, kept winning, taking the next two games and earning the right to face the Cubs in the next round. Beckett was slated to pitch the first game of the series, again. On the plane to Chicago he chewed up the fingernails on his left hand so badly that his index finger started to bleed. Pudge, intent on ignoring Beckett's nervousness lest it make him unbearably nervous too, did not even notice until the trainer, who had been making his way up the aisle to go to the bathroom, saw it. The trainer made dramatic noises and ran back for his bag. He grabbed Beckett's hand with a series of angry _tch_ s in the back of his throat as he daubed Beckett's finger with some kind of synthetic liquid skin and ordered him to wear his batting gloves to bed.

Beckett gave him a look of pure, incredulous scorn. "Uh, no."

"Uh, _yes_ ," the trainer said. "You bite these any more, won't matter if they aren't on your throwing hand, you won't be able to put your glove on come tomorrow." He pulled a little roll of athletic tape out of his back pocket and started mummifying the tip of Beckett's finger, muttering to himself.

"I ain't wearin' my damn battin' gloves to _bed_ ," Beckett insisted. He turned to look at Pudge, who had the window seat and had been pretending to be fascinated by the clouds.

"Trainer says," Pudge said, not looking around. Clouds. Clouds were great. Really interesting, the shapes they made. That one was totally shaped like Dodger Stadium. The trainer left, still mumbling to himself. Beckett was stewing in the seat next to him. Out of the corner of his eye Pudge could see the damaged finger creeping slowly upwards again. He looked back out the window. The next time he glanced over, Beckett was chewing absentmindedly on the tape, flipping through a scouting report on his lap and still looking furious.

**

Beckett gave up four runs in the first inning. Pudge was concerned that he would try to do something drastic in the dugout-- smash his head into the wall so hard his neck broke, shatter his hand on the bench, something catastrophic-- so he stuck close, sitting down right next to Beckett even though it was very, very obvious that Beckett wanted to be left alone.

"We will be fine. Go out, next inning, get them back."

"Two triples. And a homer. And a double," Beckett said, his voice hollow. He was looking down at the dugout floor, a towel over the back of his neck. "Two, two triples in one innin'. Don't _fucking_ tell me shit's gonna be fine."

"Zam-bran-o, Lof-ton, Grud-zie-la-nek," Pudge sing-songed, those being the next three Cubs due up. "Put your mind on those guys. The ones you pitch to already, they are gone. Your _job_ is to get the guys inna future."

"Fuck off. Fuck you, if I didn't think 'bout the fuckers I pitched to before, I'd make the same damn mistakes over and over and, and, and I wouldn't be worth _shit_ for _beans_. Hey, maybe I'll give up _three_ triples next inning."

Pudge fisted his hands in his lap, resisting the urge to reach out and touch Beckett. Jeff Conine, up at the plate with two outs, lined a ball into right field. Carlos Zambrano, who was pitching for the Cubs, whipped around to watch it go. Conine barreled around the basepaths, dirt flying in his wake, rounding second without stopping, his cleats scoring the ground as he slid into third.

Pudge watched him carefully, waiting for the umpire's broad-armed safe signal. "Maybe today, is jus' a day for a triple."

Beckett grunted.

The next inning went by one-two-three: strikeout, groundout, groundout. Beckett did not look particularly relaxed, but he did sit upright in the dugout after, and he actually watched the batters this time. Pudge was willing to convince himself that that was a good sign. Beckett was the first Marlins batter in the next inning, something that had the potential to be _disastrous_ if he was already in a surly frame of mind.

When it was Beckett's turn to bat Pudge kept a wary eye on him, paying attention on his footing, his proximity to home plate; too close, and Zambrano was sure to think he was being disrespected, which would set off a chain of subtle and not-so-subtle retaliatory effects that Pudge would have to handle. Redmond eased up alongside him.

"Looks good." He nodded helpfully towards the plate, as if Pudge might have thought he meant one of the Cubs or something. In truth Beckett looked more grimly determined than good. Pudge held his breath until Beckett cracked the ball into right field. Sammy Sosa caught it without much difficulty, and Beckett racked his bat hard into its cubby hole on his way back to the bench, but he had made contact. That was good. It was swinging and missing entirely that brought out his worst moods.

Juan Pierre tripled, Luis Castillo worked a walk. Pudge came out on deck while Castillo was up, edging around behind the homeplate umpire as close as he dared, trying to get a good look at Zambrano's motion, the precipitous dive of his sinker. Castillo glanced back at him after trotting down to first. Pudge stamped twice in the dirt, breaking it up with his cleats. _Be ready to run_.

He let the first pitch go by without swinging. Zambrano did not have his best control this inning, no need to push it; he was going to have to throw a fastball soon. He almost felt bad for Paul Bako, who had the dubious honor of catching Zambrano, because it was all so terribly obvious. Being forced to call obvious pitches was a cruel, cruel thing for a catcher.

The next pitch came in slow and straight, something offspeed that wasn't dropping away. He had been expecting something faster and almost overswung, managed compensate with his feet at the last possible moment, twitching back just enough to stay with the ball, get it right in the middle of his bat, the seams making a hard sound as they blasted off the wood.

Zambrano was swearing before the ball even left the infield. Pudge ran towards first like it was going to drop and turn into a real race, but his hands were tingling that particular way they did when he'd made home-run-hard contact. Sure enough, as he rounded the base, he could see the ball fly over and out past the wall. Sosa turned to watch it go almost wistfully.

Pierre and Castillo were both waiting at home. He let them smack him over the head a little before shrugging them off with a nod to the umpire-- _not showing anyone up, just a little excited, you understand_. With a single swing he'd brought them back to within one run; that was as much as he could do for Beckett right now.

He was almost afraid to look for Beckett in the dugout, knowing they were still behind, but Beckett beat him to it, joining the crowd of Marlins high-fiving Pudge at the stairs. He locked eyes with Pudge-- a sensation entirely inappropriate for a baseball game jolting Pudge somewhere well-hidden by protective gear-- and smacked him firmly on the ass. Half a second later Encarnacion and Conine and Lee were also slapping Pudge on the ass, but it was a little different when it came from Beckett.

Once things had calmed down he spotted Beckett in the middle of the dugout and went over, intending to ask a few pointedly leading questions, see if there had been as big an improvement in Beckett's mood as he hoped. He had only taken a few steps, though, before Miguel Cabrera hit a home run of his own and the bench erupted in boisterous celebration again.

"OK?" he asked, after things had calmed down for a second time. Pierre was shaking out his jersey; someone had dumped sunflower seeds down his collar after the second home run. Encarnacion was batting. The game was tied.

"OK," Beckett said, nodding compulsively and rubbing his hands together. "This is OK, this is OK. I gotta, I better stay warm." He was halfway through shoving his arm into his warm-up jacket when Encarnacion lined a ball out of the park, and got tangled up in the next, increasingly riotous welcome in the dugout. McKeon had to help extract him from the resulting jacket knot.

"Crazy," Redmond said, eyeing Beckett as he contorted himself around, all twisted up in shiny teal fabric, McKeon tugging gamely at one sleeve.

"He is not crazy," Pudge protested. "Just a little… all over the place. It is his firs' October, this is normal. I mean, he is still jus' a kid when it comes to baseball, you know."

Redmond shook his head sadly. "He's infected you with his craziness."

"You are so full of _mierda_ ," Pudge said. Beckett was experiencing so many things for the first time, on the field and off of it; his type of craziness, if it could even be called that, was nothing he could pass on to Pudge. If anything, it was the other way around.

**

They beat the Cubs, which sent them off to Yankee Stadium. The World Series. They were so much the underdogs that practically nobody outside of the professionals in Vegas could calculate the odds of them winning. In the clubhouse they blustered to each other, anything can happen, short series, luck of the day, but it was a grim sort of bluster. It wasn't as if they could just throw up their hands and admit that the thing was over; it had to be played out to the bitter end. Still.

They won the first game in New York, but lost Game 2 before anyone could really get their hopes up. Redman was wild right out of the gate, nothing Pudge or anyone else could do to stop it. McKeon pulled him in the third, and Redman sat in the dugout with his head in his hands, hair sticking out between his fingers, just about the most abject thing Pudge had seen.

Back to Florida, then, where they lost Game 3 in front of what might have been the biggest crowd ever to watch baseball at Pro Player Stadium. He had gotten kind of used to home games where 10,000 people showed up and half of those were gone by the sixth inning, throwbacks to the kinds of crowds he'd played for in those old Tulsa Driller days. This was beyond a real big league crowd, though: well over 60,000 lofted high in the air on those football stadium seats. Many of them were Yankee fans, but not all.

Game 4 went more than four hours, lasted twelve innings. Pudge caught every single one of them. They won on a walk-off homer from Alex Gonzalez, the exhaustion that had filled the dugout turned unexpectedly to giddy happiness like a switch had been flipped. Cabrera had actually been dozing in the dugout and snapped his head up so abruptly when the ball was hit that the trainers kept him after to make sure he hadn't strained his neck. Pudge stuck around the park, ostensibly to play translator if Cabrera needed it, but really because he was buzzing with energy and couldn't bring himself to leave the site and source of it just yet.

The series was tied at two wins apiece. It still seemed like a fluke. These were, after all, the Yankees. Pudge knew the Yankees better than most of these NL players; he was not about to be fooled.

Then they won Game 5.

**

//No. Absolutely not.// Maribel folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. She wasn't even looking at him and Pudge still winced.

//But mo-o-o-o-m, it's _the World Series_ //, Dereck pleaded. //I'll take my homework with me, I'll do it on the plane and inna hotel, I'd be the only kid in my class going and dad's playing and pleeeeaaaaaase?//

//If he gets to go I get to go,// Amanda added, piping up from her perch on the couch.

//Nobody gets to go! You haven't even been in school two months this year,// Maribel said. //You want to get out of school right after the year starts? How are you going to learn anything that way, and what will your teachers think? Oh, there go those spoiled Rodriguez kids, off on a plane again! You want people to think you're spoiled brats?//

//I don't care if they do. Everyone knows dad plays baseball anyways, if we _don't_ go they're gonna be like, Hey, your papi was in the World Series and you didn't even go see him play, that's weird.//

//But we did see him play, we went to the games here,// Amanda said.

Dereck grabbed a pillow off the couch and threw it at her head. //Shut up, pest, you aren't helping!// Amanda batted the pillow away with both hands, reflexes as good as any infielder Pudge had seen, and stuck out her tongue at Dereck, who bugged his eyes out at her in retaliation. Ivanna, who had been quietly building a tower with oversize lego bricks on the floor, saw his face and got frightened and started to cry.

//God, Ivanna, don't be such a baby!// Dereck muttered.

//She's only three, she _is_ a baby!// Amanda sat up straight and put her hands on her hips, Maribel in miniature.

//Not a baby!// Ivanna protested, starting to cry even harder. Maribel shot Pudge a dirty, _look what you did_ sort of glare before rushing over to soothe her.

Pudge sighed. He hadn't been the one to bring it up, but he couldn't very well blame it all on an eleven-year-old. And the truth of it was that he _did_ want them there in New York with him. Dereck, of course, who cared about baseball in this deeply intense and personal way; but also Amanda, who liked baseball when Pudge was playing at home and hated it when he was on the road; and Ivanna, who was too young to really understand that what her papa did for work was different from what most other papas and mamas did; and Maribel, who still had the magic-seeming ability to kiss him and make him forget all about baseball for at least a couple of hours. Things were going to be crazy enough as it was. Knowing that his family was there with him, for him-- maybe that would help.

When Maribel went into the kitchen to start making dinner, Pudge followed. //Look,// he said. //You should all come.// Maribel ignored him, pulling a large pot out of a cabinet, setting it down on the stove maybe a little harder than necessary.

//It would only be a few days,// he tried. //They won't be out of school that long. They could get sick and be out longer than this.//

//God forbid,// Maribel snapped. She turned on the faucet and started measuring out cups of water.

//I mean, like, a cold,// Pudge said. //Not… you know what I meant. Look.// He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. Maribel set the measuring cup down in the sink and lowered her chin, sighing softly. //I want you there,// Pudge said, pressing what little advantage he had while he still had it. //You should be there. And what if… what if this is the only chance I get? The last time I was on a team this good, the whole damn league went on strike. The World Series, that doesn't come around every year for most guys, not for me. It's taken long enough, what if I never get back here and this is my only chance and if you and the kids aren't there…//

//Hush,// Maribel whispered, turning around in his arms, wrapping her own arms around him. Pudge was surprised to realize that he was breathing hard, blinking a sting out of his eyes.

After dinner, Dereck washed the dishes, it being his turn. Pudge stood next to him at the sink, drying them and keeping an eye out for stray spots.

//Well?// Dereck finally blurted, after fidgeting silently through the silverware.

Pudge winked at him. Dereck grinned, huge and bright. //Awesome! Can I take batting practice with you guys? Can I hang out in the clubhouse during the game?//

//I will ask Coach McKeon,// Pudge said, trying and failing to keep a stupid grin off of his own face. //Tell you what, though. Keep it a secret, just you and me, but…// Dereck leaned in, soap suds dripping from his hands. //If we, you know. Go all the way.//

 _Ganamos,_ Dereck mouthed, silent, afraid to say it out loud. _Win_.

Pudge nodded. //If that. Then you and me, we will walk the bases together, right after. And we can… I will kiss home plate. And you can kiss home plate right next to me. OK?//

//OK,// Dereck said, eyes gone huge. He looked like the slightest push would have knocked him over. If only Amanda had been there to take full advantage of it.

He did not know what had possessed him, making a promise like that. It was only more pressure to win, and if they lost, Dereck would be even _more_ upset. That, on top of the losing itself, would probably be more than he could bear. But if they could pull it off, it might just turn out to be one of the best promises he had ever made.

**

The flight from Miami to New York for Game 6 was so quiet that he could hear every last mechanical twinge of the flaps on the wings, straight through from takeoff to touchdown. If they won this game, that was it: the World Series. All they needed was one win. It would have to be in New York if it happened, but it could happen. It could. Just _one more win_.

Of course Beckett had the start.

As soon as they got their keycards Beckett beelined for the hotel elevators, not waiting for Pudge to ride up with him. Maybe he was intimidated by the presence of Pudge's family, the fact that this was the first road game in months where Pudge would not be sharing his room, but lots of the other guys had brought their families up on the team plane too, and Pudge did not see why his family should be any weirder. Maybe it was something else. In any event it was worrying enough for him to con an extra key to Beckett's room from the team's travel secretary, get the kids settled into their suite before whispering to Maribel that he needed to go check on this young pitcher, big start tomorrow, you know, left by himself he might do anything. Maribel rolled her eyes and nodded.

//Don't come back too drunk,// she said, already unzipping the nearest suitcase in pursuit of distracting kid's toys.

//Wouldn't dream of it,// Pudge promised.

By the time he got there, Beckett was in the bathroom. He had the faucet running as high as it could go, so he was almost certainly doing something that Pudge needed to be there for-- throwing up, or hyperventilating, possibly even crying-- but when he tried the door he found that Beckett had locked it.

Getting Beckett out of the bathroom before he wanted to come out would result in a lot more noise than Pudge wanted to make. Fine. So long as Beckett didn't fall asleep in there, he could wait.

The first channel that came up on the TV was the hotel information screen. The second channel was something that looked like local high schoolers had broadcast it, the third and fourth were running Yankees highlights. Pudge hastily clicked away from those. Twelve channels up he finally found Telemundo, which was showing Mexican _fútbol_ , but at least it was in Spanish and contained no references to Derek Jeter.

Two goals later, Beckett emerged. His hair was wet but he was in the clothes he'd been in on the plane, so he probably hadn't been in the shower. He looked sheepish and defensive already, wiping his palms on the pockets of his jeans, but he did not seem surprised to see Pudge there.

Pudge shifted over on the bed without saying anything. Beckett lay down right next to him, pressing up close, shivering. Pudge could be charitable and assume that was because Beckett hadn't toweled his face off properly. He scooted down the bed so that he was lying down too, not propped up against the pillows. Beckett edged closer.

"Can we… can we jus', not. Talk 'bout shit."

"Yeah," Pudge said. He rolled up onto his side so that he was nose to nose with Beckett, who had his eyes closed, mouth set in a grim line, already anticipating some kind of inquisition. He carefully smoothed his hand down the back of Beckett's head, the wet hair there refusing to stay plastered down, springing back up as soon as his hand had moved off of it.

"I want you to fuck me," Beckett said. He was still shivering pretty hard.

"Night before a start? I don' think so."

Beckett tipped his head in so that their foreheads touched. "Don't care," he breathed, barely above a whisper. "Really, really fuckin' don't. It'll be. Worse if you don't."

"Oh, OK," Pudge said, "no pressure or not'in'." But he gently nudged Beckett's chin up with a finger and kissed him, like he couldn't feel Beckett shaking at all, and when Beckett rolled onto his stomach and buried his face in a pillow, Pudge made no comment on that either. He just stroked Beckett's back for a while to see if he would settle down (he didn't), then sighed, pressed a kiss there, and went to dig out the little travel bottle of lube and condom packet that he knew were in Beckett's suitcase. When he came back to the bed, Beckett had wriggled out of his clothes and was facedown again, arm crooked up, nose pressed to a forearm laid across the pillow. The sight of him there-- the broad pale back, the dark hair fuzzed over his thighs, the infinitely tantalizing curve of his ass-- was enough to make Pudge stop and stare, even if it was only for a moment. He still could not believe, sometimes, that this was something he really got to do.

He worked into Beckett slowly, a careful progression of fingers and lube and more fingers and more lube before he even thought about fucking Beckett properly. Partly it was because they should not have been doing this at all with Beckett pitching the next day, partly because something in that shivering was just a little bit scary. It was almost certainly because of the upcoming game, the potential to make or break the Marlins' chances at that ultimate prize, which was an awful lot of pressure for a kid Beckett's age. He was pretty sure it wasn't anything to do with him. Still, he was afraid on some level that if he went too fast, too hard, Beckett would crack apart along some fissure-lines lying hidden just beneath the surface of his skin and it would somehow be his fault for planting them there.

"OK?" he asked, easing up onto his knees, addressing the strong familiar line of the back of Beckett's neck. He pressed the head of his cock into Beckett, going as slow as he could stand.

Beckett mumbled something into the pillow that might have been _move_ , or _more_ , or something else entirely. He was tighter than Pudge had felt in a while, and that could have been for any one of a million reasons.

He pulled back, the sensation of it dragging all the way down to his toes. Beckett shifted up to his hands and knees, pushing himself back onto Pudge. He went in more easily the second time.

"This good?" he asked. "What you wanted?" He held onto Beckett's hips carefully, moving a little faster. Beckett was so hot inside, shaking less already, head hanging down loose between his braced arms.

"Ey. I ask you a question."

Beckett blew out a sharp breath and bucked back hard. Pudge felt himself slip in deeper than his careful, shallow thrusts had allowed and couldn't stop himself from gasping, like he was the one being opened up. Beckett dropped his head down again and started rocking back and forth, establishing rhythm at a pace he liked.

"Fine," Pudge muttered, "be that way." He spread his knees on the bed, broadening his base so that he could match Beckett's motion with harder thrusts. Beckett slid one leg back a little, hooking his foot over Pudge's calf. Pudge reached down and gave his heel a squeeze.

"Yeah," Beckett said, after a while. Pudge thought he might just be voicing his approval of the sex-- Pudge had an arm awkwardly wrapped around Beckett's body, now, moving over his cock with unsteady strokes-- but Beckett swallowed and said, "yeah. This. Yeah, this's what I wanted."

"Oh," Pudge said. He closed his eyes. The pull on his cock was almost too much, aching in his balls and the back of his throat. He tightened his hand around Beckett, Beckett clenched down around him, and suddenly it _was_ too much, Pudge gasping and gasping, twitching raggedly behind Beckett, pressing up against him so hard when he came that he couldn't _not_ hit Beckett's prostate, nudging him up over the edge too with a surprised, short yelp that would have been deeply unsexy at basically any other time.

"Oh," he repeated, once he could breathe again.

"Yeah," Beckett said. He had put his face back down on the pillow, but his shoulders lay smooth and still, all the shivers and tremors worked clean out of him. Lying on his stomach like this, spread and relaxed on the hotel sheets, he could have been any average guy, coming down off a good fuck, not a worry in the world.

**

"Pretty cold," Beckett said, when they got to the stadium. It was in the 50s, sun long since down. McKeon got a frightened look on his face. Any admission of concern from his starter was a sign of doom.

Pudge took Beckett's hands between his own, rubbed them up even though he had the smaller hands. Beckett dropped his eyelids to half mast and McKeon visibly relaxed. It was not a problem. If it got too cold, he would ask the umpire to let Beckett blow into his hands on the back of the mound. The umpire-- Tim Welke was the homeplate umpire for this one. Pudge had worked with him before. Not a problem at all.

The crowd was almost entirely made up of Yankee fans, packed in so tight that there was not a sliver of teal to be seen, not even a brief glimpse in the dark mass. They cheered at the Yankee introductions, chanted the names of the players one by one, waiting on a wave from Jeter or a finger to the hat brim from Bernie Williams. October was something they felt they had a right to, here in New York; the crowd was comfortable dispensing with reverence and moving straight to raucousness, excitement, unrestrained shouted support for the names they wore repeated in replica jerseys on their own backs. They weren't much like Marlins fans.

Beckett was stoic throughout, eyes gone distant with his mouth tamped down small. Pudge did nothing to pull him back. It was better for Beckett to be off wherever it was he went when he was ready to pitch, not here with this stadiumful of wrongly colored pinstripes and this easy confidence in the arm of Andy Pettitte, the inevitability of another ring.

After the introductions they played the National Anthem. Pudge of course was out in the bullpen with Beckett, paused in their warm-up to stand with their hats over their hearts, bellied up to that snapping flag. The rest of the Marlins, across the field in the dugout, seemed so far away that they might have been by themselves out there, pitcher and catcher alone against the Yankees and the world.

The anthem ended. Pudge put his hat on, smoothing it down around the edges. He reached out and leaned his glove against the small of Beckett's back. "Ready?" he asked.

Beckett did not answer. But his spine straightened from the point where Pudge had touched him, his shoulders drawing back, chin up, making him look at least an inch taller.

" _Listo_ ," Pudge said, quietly, to himself.

**

Something in that curve, that pitch dropping out of its supposed line like a trick lead weight, was giving the Yankees fits. They swung and missed, swung and missed again. Derek Jeter was batting better than almost anyone else on the team, but in the fifth inning he made his third out in as many at-bats. He whiffed badly, grimacing before he had even finished his follow-through. Pudge was up out of his crouch immediately, shouting wordless encouragement, holding up a fist for Beckett to see, _yes, yes, fucking right we got him_.

Jeter went back to the Yankee dugout with his head down, staring at his bat like he did not understand how it could have betrayed him. There was no fear there, not that Pudge could see-- Jeter had won before and obviously expected to win again-- but there was incomprehension, a simple inability to really understand what he was facing. Pudge wanted to chase him back to his bench and shout at all those blandly self-assured ballplayers, lined up there with their close-cropped hair, their clean-shaven chins: take a look at this, you _cabrones_ , take a good fucking look. You'll never see pitches this good again.

**

They only got two runs. An RBI single with two men on, Pudge standing on deck, pushing his hands down, down, down as Gonzalez raced home, telling him to slide; a sacrifice fly with Jeff Conine hurrying home from third. The very smallest of small ball.

But they were runs. One, two, right there on the scoreboard, and Beckett had set his mouth in a grim, hard line, the very embodiment of determination to not be out-pitched, not by Andy fucking Pettitte, not in a game this big. Not in front of a crowd this hostile. Not this time.

**

Ruben Sierra pinch hit in the seventh inning. He was baseball-old, in the declining phase of his career, but the Yankees trusted him as a power bat off the bench, trusted in his ability to loom over home plate, make the pitcher think twice about throwing fastballs.

 _Not going to work,_ Pudge thought. _Got this guy,_ he thought, and although he badly wanted to, he did not dare head to the mound to say it. He was not willing to risk breaking Beckett's concentration.

Four pitches later, Beckett had struck Sierra out.

**

In the bottom of the ninth, Bernie Williams flew out to left. Miguel Cabrera caught the ball easily. He tossed it back in casually, like this wasn't a World Series game, like he wasn't a twenty-year-old kid two outs away from a World Series victory.

Hideki Matsui was up next. _Godzilla_ , that was what they called him in Japan, a significantly cooler nickname than _Pudge_. But Beckett got him to pop up too, only two pitches, easy, so easy.

Next up was Posada. The catcher.

**

The Marlins were wearing their black jerseys, and the sky over Yankee Stadium was black, so that Pudge in his crouch, looking up from a low angle towards the mound, saw Beckett as a part of that sky, an occasional whirlwind of motion issuing white balls from its midst, spinning wildly, as if they really _had_ been ejected from some kind of intense weather pattern, a miniature isolated cyclone formed by the competing wind currents in the bowl of the stadium.

**

He put down a sign for the pitch, flashing the signal secretly with his fingers, low, between his legs where Posada couldn't peek down and see. Beckett flicked his eyes a hair, agreeing without any other movement.

 _Keep the ball down_ , Pudge thought, but it was just a fleeting reminder to himself. It wasn't anything he had to try and signal.

**

On the third pitch of his at-bat Posada made contact. Pudge lunged forwards but the ball was already beyond him, skipping down the inside of the first baseline, each blade of grass that crossed its path slowing it in tiny increments. Derrek Lee, at first base, was too far away to get it with Posada off at the crack of the bat. Posada was not so very slow, for a catcher.

Beckett came charging off the mound: one step, two, perfectly timed so that the ball fed itself into his ready glove, right in stride. He took one more step, momentum carrying him to the baseline, to Posada, who was right there, moving perpendicular to him--

and Beckett was straightening up with the ball in his glove, arm outstretched towards Posada--

and Posada was barreling onwards, nowhere to dodge, unable to back up--

and Pudge was running down the line, he had to be there to help if he could--

and Posada tried to twist away, showing his back to Beckett, who tried to slow mid-step, started to stumble over his own feet, glove hand outstretched--

and the glove touched Posada--

and Pudge saw it, and Beckett saw it, and Posada must have felt it, and the nearest umpire saw it. He brought his arm up. He clenched his hand into a fist.

Beckett stumbled to a stop, bent over, head down, and screamed. It was a sound like nothing Pudge had ever heard before. It sounded like something that shouldn't exist outside of jungles, rainforests, hot wet places where the air was so thick it could choke you and the birds came in colors never seen on a baseball uniform. It was a sound that made his scalp tighten and prickle, a sound that made all the fine hairs on his forearms stand up.

Then Beckett straightened. His face was red, his eyes wild, his mouth still open but no sound coming out, now. He put both his hands up in the air, and Pudge realized.

He leapt up, mask gone, helmet sliding backwards off his head, and when he came down he was in Lee's arms, somehow. And then Gonzalez was grabbing him around the back and they were all jumping together, yelling and whooping, and the rest of the team was on the field, jumping in the New York night, and he didn't know where Beckett was but it didn't matter, because Dereck had run out onto the grass.

He had on a black jersey too, and he was getting so tall, it took a moment before Pudge realized, but Dereck picked him out right away and moved in a straight line towards him, the only person moving in a straight line on that twisting field of celebration. Pudge saw him, and bent over and hugged him, his nose mashed into Dereck's shoulder so hard that it must have hurt, but Dereck didn't say anything at all, hung on just as hard. There were camera flashes going off all around, popping white against the sea of black.

Pudge stopped hugging Dereck just long enough to grab his hand. Dereck squeezed his fingers so hard that they ached, but it was good. Everything was good. Pudge looked down at him and Dereck looked back and neither one of them had to say a word. They walked to first base, hand in hand. There were lots of Marlins on the basepaths, but they all got out of the way.

From first base they walked to second, making sure they both touched the base with their shoes, and then around to third. A couple cameramen had started tagging along in their wake. From third base they walked to home, and they knelt there. Pudge bent to kiss the plate, Dereck doing the same at his side. That dirty, scuffed, off-white pentagon set flat in the New York ground was the best thing that Pudge had ever touched to his lips.

And the Florida Marlins won the World Series.

 **2004**

Flying into Detroit in January, his very first stop was a doctor's office. The Marlins were coming off just about the best season a team could have, but could not afford him. The Tigers were coming off just about the worst season a team could have, and were looking to spend money. It was, as Boras kept saying, a no-brainer.

It was true that he had lost some of the urgency that had dogged his career, getting that long-awaited ring. But he still wanted to win. He was not in any way ready to fade out to a bad team, live out the rest of his baseball life in easy semi-obscurity. The question, then, was whether or not _Detroit_ equaled _semi-obscurity_. He wasn't quite decided yet, but it wouldn't hurt to respond to their show of interest, get the physical at least.

Mike Ilitch, the owner of the Tigers, came out and met him at the doctor's office. Pudge was impressed in spite of himself; he could not think of another owner who would have done the same. Ilitch only wanted to talk about the future in Detroit, how much they needed a veteran winner to help show them the way, how much influence Pudge could have on a team like this. All very flattering. No doubt it was also all very calculated, but he could not work out where Ilitch would be lying. The Tigers had been _so_ bad, and they really _did_ need a leader, and that leader really _did_ have to be high-profile and well-established, if they wanted to have a hope of getting any other free agents to sign-- that was just plain good sense.

The physical took a while, the doctor paying particular attention to his knees. Pudge was not offended. He had, after all, been catching for thirteen years at this level, many more at the amateur and minor league levels before it. When he came out Ilitch was still sitting in the little waiting room with a foot up on one knee, reading a dog-eared magazine that must have come from the table in front of him. Pudge stared. Ilitch was a billionaire. It was kind of a bizarre sight.

"Right as rain, I trust!" Ilitch said, popping up with a spryness that belied his years when he saw Pudge standing there. He had some accent that Pudge could not quite place.

"Sí, doctors think so."

"Well then, son, I'm sure we won't have any objections on our end. You think on what we talked about." Ilitch put a hand on Pudge's shoulder. "We'd be happy and honored to have you. The kids on this team, they could really use a man like you around. And the things you could do for us… well, happy and honored. Yes sir, that's what we'd be."

He knew that he was being played ruthlessly, that all the bargaining power was on his end, but Pudge was stupidly, overwhelmingly flattered anyways. On the one hand-- _Detroit_. On the other-- well, this level of respect. Hadn't he earned that sort of thing, by now? Wasn't it his just and proper due?

**

//How does Detroit sound?//

// _Detroit_?// Maribel, to judge from that reaction, did not think Detroit sounded good. Pudge took the phone away from his ear, took a deep breath, and shoved it up to his face again.

//You wouldn't have to live in, you know, the _city_. There are places, suburbs. They took me around to see them, they're pretty nice. It doesn't look like the Detroit you're thinking of.//

//Detroit, Iván. _Detroit_. Detroit is _cold_.//

//We'd mostly be here in the summer anyways,// Pudge said. //Kenny was in Minnesota, you know, he got by.//

//Didn't _Kenny_ grow up on a _farm_?//

//In Florida,// Pudge muttered. //Not like it was…. corn in Iowa or something.//

//What a _farm boy_ can handle still doesn't have anything to do with what _we_ should think is OK. And what about the schools in Detroit? The kids would have to stay in school down here, and I'd have to stay with them.//

//So. What are you saying? It'd be like Texas again?//

//Texas was not so far from Miami as Detroit is.//

//Well, I'd want you with me,// Pudge said, quiet. //And the kids. That's what I'd prefer. Always. But… we've done it before, we can make it work again. I can't stay in Florida. It's a good deal, what they're offering here. The money, the years.//

//Better than what they're offering you everywhere else?//

//Yes,// Pudge said, although it wasn't just the contract. Plenty of teams were interested in him; there had been a number of contract offers, most of them very good. But Detroit was the only team that _needed_ him, and knew it, and was willing to get down on bended knee in front of him if they had to, and maybe he liked that. Thirteen years-- maybe he did feel like he deserved that.

There was quiet on the line. Pudge shifted the phone to his other ear, looking out the hotel window. They had put him up in a place on Woodward Avenue, which was the road the ballpark was on, but it was a long road and the hotel was miles and miles up it, in an area that did not bear much resemblance to downtown Detroit. There were little shops on the street, boutiques with fancy window displays, the sidewalk pavement clean and in good repair.

//It was nice having you around,// Maribel finally said. //For the kids, it was good, and for me…. but it was only the one season. I guess I was hoping we could find a way to do that again.//

//I know,// Pudge said, feeling a little guilty and tamping it down as hard as he could. //I would've… it was nice. I mean, for me too. But the only way would be to stay in Florida, and the Marlins don't have any money. And Tampa Bay, they have even less. And, you know, I can't sign for so much less than I'm worth, or the union gets on me.//

//They really wouldn't let you take less, to be here?//

//If it was only a _little_ less, maybe. But the offers they've made, it would have to be so much less. I can't, I mean, what it would say to the owners and everything, they could not allow it. I don't blame them,// he added, quietly.

There was another pause, and when Maribel spoke again, her voice had changed in some way Pudge could not entirely interpret. //So. Detroit. You weren't asking so much as telling, were you?//

//Of course not. If you really, absolutely hated it--//

//You'll do what you want to do,// Maribel said. //You'll go where you feel-- where you have to go. But I will miss you during the season, Iván. The children will miss you.//

//I know,// Pudge said. //Me… me too. But that, you know, that is baseball. Always missing people.// He had been very deliberately not thinking about Beckett this winter. Beckett was young enough to stay under contract with the Marlins, not due the raise that would take him out of their price range for another couple of years yet.

He was not an idiot. It was obvious that Maribel was not happy with the idea of him being so far away for so much of the year. But he couldn't stay for Beckett and he couldn't stay there for her, and maybe he should have found some way to stay there for Dereck, Amanda, Ivanna, but events had stacked up against him and he could not think of a way. It wasn't that he had no choice: it was just that none of his choices could possibly involve staying in Florida anyways.

As soon as he hung up with Maribel, he started dialing again. He was going to have to let Boras know that he'd made a decision. _Detroit_ , he thought. _Los Tigres. Soy un Tigre_. He mouthed the phrase silently while he waited for Boras to pick up, trying to make it sound right, trying to fit it to the reality he knew.

**

It was good to be back in the American League. None of these pitchers wanted anything to do with the batting cage and none of them wanted to fight Pudge on pitch calling, workout routines, _anything_. They mostly just seemed grateful to be with the team, even if there was no guarantee, in February, that any of them would make the big league roster.

Some were still obviously shell-shocked from the previous season. Mike Maroth spent all of spring training walking around like a ghost, looking through people, which Pudge was willing to put down to weird left-hander personality quirks until someone told him that Maroth had lost twenty-one games in 2003. Nobody lost twenty-one games and came back the next season intact, but here was Maroth with his jersey on just the same as the rest of them.

There was this kid, Jeremy Bonderman, who had been called up at twenty years old, straight from single-A. Pudge could sympathize with that experience, to a point-- it wasn't too far off from what he'd done when he had made the leap to the Majors-- but _he_ had been called up because the minors had nothing left to show him. Bonderman had been called up out of organizational necessity and had been thrown into the rotation long before he was ready. He had lost nineteen games in his very first year, a kind of bad that was almost unheard-of. Nineteen losses in a single season was more than most _veterans_ could stand and remain sane; teams were supposed to protect their young talent from things like that. Alan Trammell, the manager, could not even look at Bonderman without guilt breaking out, painfully obvious, all over his face.

When he asked Trammell who the catcher had been in '03-- a not-insignificant question, with the pitching such an epic mess-- Trammell had jerked a thumb out at the field, towards Brandon Inge, who was small and scrawny and blonde and did not look anything like a catcher. In fact, he was taking infield practice at third base. Pudge stared and asked again, certain that there had been a misunderstanding, but Trammell just pointed at Inge again.

"The _third baseman_ was the _catcher_?"

Trammell shrugged, awkward. "He's never been, um, the happiest about it, but he's a pretty versatile guy? He can play, you know, lots of positions. If he has to? And last year he, um, he kind of had to?"

" _Madre de Dios_ ," Pudge muttered. "Rookie pitchers and a catcher who is a third baseman, no wonder how it turn out." Trammell flushed a little and turned his gaze back to where Inge was fielding balls at third. He had very good footwork for someone who had spent the previous year at an entirely different position.

So maybe it was a damaged, fucked-up version of the AL. But it was still the AL, with the ballparks that Pudge knew best and the players with whom he was most familiar, the lineup strategies he had spent most of his career preparing for and understanding. Aside from the cold-- and it would be seriously cold come April, in Detroit-- it was just like riding a bicycle. Get right back up in the seat and it all came back to you.

The Tigers signed Urbina in March, the middle of spring training. Nobody bothered to tell him about it beforehand (why would they, of course; still, he would have liked some word, some warning, something), and so it caught him by surprise, walking in one morning to see Urbina standing there, a heavy bag slung easily over one shoulder, thick eyebrows drawn down and together, looking around like he wasn't quite sure where the locker room was. He brightened right up when he caught sight of Pudge, though.

He grinned, all teeth, as he dropped his bag and stepped up to Pudge, catching him in a hard hug. //Well, well! All anyone can talk about, you signing here!// He bent his head forward and lowered his voice. //It is good to see you again. _Very_ good.// One hand slid down Pudge's back like an extension of the hug, skimming over his hip just a little too slowly before Urbina took a step back to pick up his bag again.

Pudge smiled politely. Urbina had to have meant that innocently. It had probably looked innocent to anyone who might have been watching. Probably.

He meant to nip this in the bud, take Urbina aside early on and make certain they were both clear on what they would and would not be doing together, but somehow he never got around to it. Between the Detroit media (eager for any player who could legitimately be called a star) and the other Detroit players (eager for any player who could legitimately be called a leader), it seemed like there was never a moment when he and Urbina were alone together. And he was spending as much time as he could with his family while he was still in Florida, which limited the time he had for _any_ ballplayer outside of practice hours.

Urbina for his part seemed to get the message anyways. Maybe he understood when he saw that Pudge was not going out of his way to make time for him, or maybe he noticed that Pudge made a point of not showering at the same time as him for a week before giving up on the logistical difficulties involved in that. He was more reserved around the other guys than he had been in Florida and he didn't seem like he was making any special effort to get Pudge on his own. He didn't seem to be looking for a Grand Speech of Parting or anything; that was good enough for Pudge.

**

Trammell had given all the pitchers scouting packets as preparation for their first trip into Yankee Stadium. They were coming off a four-game losing streak and so Pudge was not particularly surprised to see the pitchers all deeply, almost desperately engrossed when he got to the ballpark. For a moment he toyed with the idea of grabbing an extra one himself, but presumably if Trammell had thought he needed it, he would have given one to Pudge directly.

He went in to have Kevin Rand, the trainer, work on his back for a bit. It was July and he was starting to feel those months piling up in the muscles around his spine. Nothing too bad, of course, nothing that would keep him out of games, but he was getting to be the age where it was better to take extra precautions. It wasn't paranoid to want to get to know the trainer a little better.

When he came back out into the clubhouse, the pitchers were all still deep in their packets, pages split evenly in half as they variously worked their way through towards the middle, with the exception of Bonderman, who had not gotten past the second page and was staring down at the papers in his lap with a tight little line furrowed between his eyebrows. Bonderman was near-infamous on the team for his general stoicism and impassiveness. Pudge had never seen him look _perturbed_ before.

"What's wrong?" he asked, leaning in close, something in the library hush of the clubhouse making him feel like he should speak quietly.

"Nothin'." Bonderman's broad, usually pasty cheeks were turning a dull brick red.

Pudge frowned. Bonderman didn't blush easily; most of the time he barely reacted to anything at all. And if he didn't react much during games, to get visibly ruffled over _a scouting packet_ …. a horrible thought struck. "Can you… are your eyes OK?"

"M'eyes're fine," Bonderman muttered.

"OK." He looked down at the scouting packet still in Bonderman's lap. Bonderman had a hand lying on the page, finger extended like he had been trailing it over the lines there. Pudge might have assumed he was just a slow reader, but even Wilfredo Ledezma had made more progress by now, and English wasn't his first language.

Bonderman mumbled something. "What?" Pudge asked. Bonderman mumbled again, head bowed. His face and neck were entirely red. Pudge still could not hear him.

"OK, look, jus'… come wit' me." He grabbed Bonderman's arm and tugged him upright.

The player territory deep inside Yankee Stadium had been built like a warren, low-ceilinged and poorly lit, a bewildering maze of hallways branching off and unexpectedly reconnecting, kinking crazily around sharp corners, but Pudge had been coming to it on road trips for over a decade now, and knew his way around, having long since ferreted out all the relatively private places a visiting player could readily access. The room into which he pulled Bonderman had once been a video room, abandoned when the Yankees switched away from VHS and started recording everything digitally, something that apparently required different equipment, easier to install in a new, dedicated space, rather than trying to retrofit a roomful of outdated technology. There was a single long table, very dusty, with an old cube-shaped TV on it, also dusty. The shelves along the walls were only half full of tapes.

Bonderman swept his scouting packet over the surface of the table once, clearing away the worst of the dust, and eased up onto it without being asked. His feet started swinging back and forth immediately in tight, nervous little jerks, drawing little paths in the dust on the floor.

Pudge leaned against the shelving-- carefully, in case it was no longer as structurally sound as it had once been-- and waited. He was not about to insult Bonderman by asking again.

"I. I read slow," Bonderman said, head down, fingers picking at the edges of the packet's pages. "I got. I was born with. Um, it's called dyslexia. An' they didn't catch on 'til I was thirteen, so. It's still pretty… hard'n'all. I cn'read just fine," he added, a defensive bite creeping into his voice, "ain't like I'm some kinda idiot. It just takes me a while, that's all."

" _Dislexia_. That is, what, a disease, right?"

"Kinda. It's a. A kinda learnin' disorder." Bonderman was looking at the floor still, his voice gone quiet and reluctant.

Pudge eyed at the fat sheaf of papers rumpled up on Bonderman's lap. At the rate he had been reading, it would take him a week to finish them all. Trammell wanted the pitchers to be at least passing familiar with all the reports before the end of the series.

He stepped forward and held out a hand. Bonderman stared at him for a long moment, then hesitantly held the papers out. Pudge took them away, flipped past the introductory pages, the team stats, until he found the first hitter profile.

"OK. Bernie Williams. Lead-off. 'Bility to hit for average… mm, he is in decline. Thirty-five year old--"

"You don't gotta do that," Bonderman said. Deprived of the packet, his hands twisted around each other, uncomfortably twined.

"Ey, it is probly a good thing for me to read this stuff anyway, you know? Doesn't hurt to know a little more about a Yankee before a game." He shrugged to make it a small nothing, not a big deal. Bonderman looked unconvinced, but Pudge hopped up onto the table next to him anyways, close to his side, smoothing the packet flat across his knees so that they could both see the charts. Bonderman shuffled his hands in his lap, head hanging so low that Pudge could not tell if he was looking at the packet or not.

But that didn't really matter. What mattered was getting this information into the pitchers, and not causing a pitcher so much pain or embarrassment in the process that he wouldn't have a hope of retaining that information. There was a problem getting the information to Bonderman-- the exact nature of the problem was not important. The only thing that mattered was the fact that there _was_ a problem, and the fact that Pudge had the ability to at least temporarily circumvent it.

He drew his own finger down the page until he found Bernie Williams' scouting report again, cleared his throat as unobtrusively as he could, and started to read.

**

//I saw you go off with Bonderman,// Urbina said. He was clearly trying to say it airily, nonchalantly, but his voice was strained.

//So?// Pudge glanced up over his shoulder, hands soapy under the stream of water in the sink. He hadn't heard Urbina come into the bathroom, but he was definitely there now, a sullen fuming presence, arms folded, glaring at Pudge. //I can't talk to the starters before a big series?//

//Don't see any need to go off talking in _private_. I don't know what you'd need to be doing in _private_ that you couldn't do in front of the rest of the team.//

//Nothing. I just wanted to talk, you know, pitching… I didn't want him distracted, to get interrupted in the middle of it--//

//Sure, and I'll _bet_ you didn't want to get interrupted in the middle of anything.//

//What the fuck is that supposed to mean?// He turned the sink off, wiped his hands down the sides of his pants, two quick swipes each to get the worst of the water off, wondering, idly, why these kinds of conversations always seemed to happen to him in ballpark bathrooms. Maybe it was that way for everyone. //You, what, implying something? What's it matter to you?//

//To me, nothing. I'm just letting you know, you running around like a _whore_ is getting to be a little obvious.//

No, this definitely only happened to him. //Like a…. _Nothing. Happened._ // He would have laughed at the idea of it-- the idea of doing _anything_ like that with Bonderman-- if he wasn't fully invested in gritting his teeth with rage. Who the _fuck_ did Urbina think he was, saying shit like that? As if Urbina-- who was married and had a kid and slept around as much as any ballplayer-- had a leg to stand on, calling him _un puto_.

//Sure it didn't.// Urbina flicked at the fingernails of one hand with his thumb, probably trying to look like he didn't care what Pudge did, but if that was true he wouldn't have brought this stupidity up in the first place. _Jeremy Bonderman_ , of all people…

//You need to stop being such a paranoid freak,// Pudge said. //Do you think it's, what, cute or something? Am I supposed to be impressed?//

Urbina's brief cool snapped with a sharpness that was almost audible. He surged forward, grabbed Pudge by the shoulders and drove him backwards into the tiled wall. There was something wrong with his face; he barely even looked like the Urbina that Pudge knew-- thought he had once known-- anymore. He shoved a leg between Pudge's knees, trapping Pudge between his body and the wall, turning his relative height into a weapon. His hands on Pudge's shoulders were like tightening vices.

//Hey! Hey, knock it off, OK.// He was not going to let Urbina get to him, he was not going to be freaked out, he was not going to be scared that Urbina was so much taller than him and had him backed up with nowhere to go and apparently had the strength of _a crazy person_ and if he yelled and someone came in they would think the wrong thing instead of rescuing him, and the wrong things they were thinking would kind of be right, and he couldn't have the kids on this team thinking he needed rescuing anyways, so he could not let Urbina get to him, he couldn't, he…. was already freaked out, he had to work with what he had, fine, he would just have to fake cool more effectively than Urbina had done. If he let Urbina see just how rattled he truly was, it would only goad Urbina to loftier and more dangerous heights of insanity. That was one good thing he'd learned from the season with Beckett, anyways.

Urbina pressed his leg up harder between Pudge's own and lowered his head as he aimed for a kiss. Pudge turned his head sharply, avoiding it. His lip was sliding up in a disgusted sneer that he did not care if Urbina saw. How he had _ever_ thought this was a good idea was beyond him now. Shouldn't he have some kind of… some kind of crazydar to go with his gaydar?

He tried to think back, see if there had been indications, but it was hard to think clearly under the circumstances, and Urbina had seemed like a normal guy anyways, within the usual parameters of Professional Baseball Players Weirdness. Still. Still. There had to have been something. He should have noticed.

Deflected, Urbina's lips landed on the side of his neck, where he immediately started to lick and suck, grossly fervid. //Get _off_ ,// Pudge grunted, shoving forward as hard as he could. Urbina staggered backwards, arms pinwheeling to keep him on his feet, eyes wild. Pudge hastily stepped away, trying to put distance between them without getting his back up against the wall again.

His neck felt like it was burning where Urbina's mouth had been. He didn't dare take his eyes off of Urbina long enough to look in a mirror, could only hope that there wasn't a mark.

//Stop it with this playing around bullshit. Hard to get isn't pretty in _old men_.//

//This is _not_ me playing hard to get,// Pudge said. His breathing was steady. The breathing of a guy who was cool and in control and not in the least bit worried, and if that came with an effort, well, faking it effectively was the main thing. He thumped his own chest with an open palm. //This is me telling you _no_. This is _not_ a thing that we do and it's not _gonna_ be a thing that we do, not now and not ever and that's. _Final_.//

//Oh don't be coy, _darling_ , you can't deny how it was _before_ \--//

//Before! What, I fucked you _once_ , a fucking _year_ ago! This was _never_ a thing that we did.// Urbina shook his head, like he couldn't believe what Pudge was saying. Pudge's desire to stay away from Urbina just barely overrode the desire to stomp right up to him and wring his stupid neck. //No, OK, you fucking listen to me. You need to stop being so… so fucking delusional! I'd say you need to get over it, but _there wasn't ever anything to get over anyways_!//

//You're the delusional one,// Urbina snarled. His arms were stiff at his sides, fingers curling in. //You wanted it as much, more than I did, now you think, what, you fool yourself…. why, huh? You finish with your little pitcher, now you think you've found some new toy, someone younger, prettier--//

//You got no fucking idea what you're talking about--// --because if Urbina was talking about Beckett, he should shut the fuck up about things he didn't understand in the least, and if he was talking about himself he was clearly out of his mind, and really, on top of everything, the idea of Bonderman being _prettier_ than _anyone_ was almost too much.

//You don't think anybody knows, you think, you think, but everyone knows, little Pudge, I know _everything about you_.// The look on Urbina's face was warping into something that Pudge did not like one bit. He backed away, trying to edge around towards the door without Urbina really noticing.

//You don't know shit about me,// Pudge said. _Dios_ forbid he keep his big stupid mouth shut.

Urbina shook his head jerkily. His hands closed into fists and opened again, the fingers tense and twitching. He probably didn't even realize he was doing it. Probably. It was freaky as hell.

//You. One of these days you're going to regret this,// Urbina said. //You're really, really. You little bitch, you're going to regret it.//

//I _really_ don't think so.// Pudge edged back until he could get his hand on the doorknob. The only thing he regretted was having ever touched Urbina in the first place, but at least he had enough brains left to not say that out loud.

The clubhouse seemed eerily normal after escaping close quarters with Urbina, who was evidently crazy, but thankfully not quite so crazy that he would out himself alongside Pudge in front of the other guys. Most of the team had gone home already, but Trammell was still in his office with the door open, typing very slowly on his computer. Carlos Guillen had stayed late to soak in one of the metal sardine-can hot tubs, letting the pain from a pitch that had hit him during the game fade out a little. Inge and Eric Munson were on the floor in front of Inge's locker, doing something that looked like a card game played with baseball cards instead of the usual kind. Inge cheekily waggled a couple of fingers when Pudge walked by. They were betting little piles of bubblegum.

Apparently nobody had heard anything. He supposed he shouldn't have been surprised-- they had mostly been talking, not shouting-- but it was still somehow weird to walk through the familiar space, to walk past the guys in it like everything was the same as always, when it felt like he was all raw edges and flayed ends. It felt like the sort of thing that someone should have been able to see.

But Trammell just muttered indistinctly about how good it was he had worked a walk off of the Twins, and Guillen nodded at him like always, weak chin sinking into his neck (uncharitable of Pudge to notice, maybe, but he always, always, always did), and Munson didn't even glance up. Munson, who was some sort of failed catcher-- Pudge had never asked anyone for the details-- was kind of terrified of him. Pudge wasn't really interested in doing anything about that, because it was nice, maybe, to have at least one kid in the clubhouse who still considered him scary this late in the season.

He had made things as clear as he possibly could to Urbina. And Urbina, he felt certain, could not do anything more to attack or expose Pudge without exposing his own activities to the team at the same time. So it was a _punto muerto_ , an impasse. It might be a little tense, a little awkward, but things should return to normal now.

Over by his locker, taking slow, careful breaths, he could hear the irregular tick-tacking of Trammell's bad typing, just off-rhythm enough to be annoying. He could hear the occasional slosh of Guillen in the hot tub, the flicks of Inge and Munson's cards as they turned over. He could not hear Urbina anywhere. Normal. Things would go back to normal. You could sneak a little to the left or a little to the right, but nothing could deviate too far from the baseline in baseball and expect to stick around.

 **2005**

The atmosphere in the plane was stuffy and close, the little nozzle above him issuing only a thin stream of dried-out, cooled air. Carlos Pena was in the window seat next to him, thumbing though an old Sports Illustrated with a bunch of Blue Jays on the cover. Pena was 27 but looked closer to 21. He knew Pudge from the '01 season, when he had been up with Texas a little, and he had finally gotten over the starry-eyed stares that had dominated his interactions with Pudge before. He spoke perfect Boston-accented English and flawless Dominican-accented Spanish, had amazing dimples, and was absolutely, incontrovertibly straight. Pudge liked him for it. Being around Pena was easy.

There was some low, murmured conversation from the back of the plane, but except for the droning undertone of the engines and the subliminal shushing of the air nozzles, it was mostly quiet. Overnight flights to the west coast after a game in the eastern time zone were generally tired and subdued, a universal across all of Pudge's past and present teams. He dozed. Every so often he would lose control of the muscles in his neck, one by one in gradual sequence, so that his head slid down onto Pena's shoulder, which would jerk him back into wakefulness just long enough to straighten and begin the process all over again.

When the shouting started he at first thought it was part of a dream, his mind slow and reluctant to give up on sleep. It wasn't until he felt Pena stiffen alertly underneath his cheek that he sat up properly, realized he was hearing actual sounds. He wiped a hand across his eyes, gummy with exhaustion. There was a hell of a commotion coming from the back of the plane.

"Holy shit," Pena muttered. Pudge twisted around in his seat to look.

Half the team, it seemed, had tried to cram themselves into the aisle near the rear end of the cabin. It was impossible to see clearly, but arms were moving up and back in a way that triggered a cascade of Nolan-Ryan-esque memories in his head. Guys were _throwing punches_ back there.

"I'm gonna--" he said, clambering up out of his seat at the same time that Pena grabbed his arm and said, "--dude, you better not." Pudge gently dislodged his hand. The Tigers did not have an official team captain, but he was the closest thing to it, and he couldn't-- he couldn't just let this, whatever it might be, happen without him. Pena did not make any other moves to stop him, although he did lean all the way over Pudge's now-vacant seat to watch anxiously as Pudge started fighting his way through to the center of the disturbance.

He shoved Bobby Higginson out of the way, ducked under Kirk Gibson's arms, and found himself practically on top of the core of the fight-- it _was_ a fight, no chance of mistaking it now. Rondell White was curled up at the very back of the plane, hands over his face. On the aisle floor in front of him was Inge, face bright red against his blonde hair, grappling with someone larger. Pudge could only see the back of Inge's assailant, but that was enough to make the bottom of his stomach drop straight down through the floor of the plane. Venezuelan swear words sounded out clearly against Inge's one man background chorus of breathless, almost squeaky _fuck_ s.

He got his arms around the aggressor's midsection, planted his feet, and pulled backwards as hard as he could, peeling the guy off of Inge. A heavy, boozy scent wafted up, palpable as a warm cloth being laid across his face.

//Fuck you, I fuckin' kill you!// Urbina shouted, still flailing his arms around. Pudge backed him off another step. The rest of the team was pressing in behind him and the seats were pressing in on him from both sides; he didn't have nearly enough room for this. Inge was trying to sit up but couldn't stop wheezing. White was still curled up with his hands over his face. Between flashes of Urbina's arms, Pudge could see something that he was pretty sure was blood on the floor. Good God. Hopefully it was just from a nosebleed.

//Stop it!// he shouted, trying to break in through whatever mess of noise was occupying Urbina's mind at the moment. //Knock it off! What the fuck is wrong with you?// He tightened his arms around Urbina's ribs, some vague idea that if he squeezed hard enough, maybe the crazy and the drunk would be forced right out. But Urbina just kept thrashing, fists tracing dangerously unpredictable arcs through the cabin, swearing in unconnected phrases, slurred Spanish that wasn't directed at Pudge and wouldn't be understood by Inge.

More people were shouting behind him. Gibson had pressed up close to Pudge, grabbed one of Urbina's arms and pinned it to his own side, shouting for someone else to grab the other. Inge had crawled over to White and was pulling his hands away from his face, calling for the team trainer in a hoarse voice that could not possibly carry over the rest of the noise in that part of the plane; Rand, operating on some injured-player instinct, was trying to squeeze his way up the side of the aisle towards them anyways.

Urbina stopped struggling. Pudge sighed in relief and turned his head to look at Gibson, precisely when Urbina suddenly shoved his entire body back, hard. Pudge slammed into Gibson, who slammed into the three or four other Tigers close behind him, and the whole mess of them slammed down onto the floor.

The plane hit a short space of turbulent air, bouncing them all. Someone's elbow crashed into the side of Pudge's head, almost making him lose his grip on Urbina, who surged forward in the direction of Inge and White. Pudge just barely managed to stay with him, fingers scrabbling at Urbina's shirt, the fabric tearing a little but holding long enough for Pudge to wrap both arms around Urbina's chest again.

Urbina flung his head backwards and cracked Pudge across the bridge of his nose. Bursts of red exploded across his field of vision, and the cacophonous shouting faded out to a brassy buzzing in his ears. He gaped up at the ceiling for a bit, indistinctly aware that his arms were still around Urbina, holding him back, somehow. After a while he gradually realized that a new weight had added itself to the squirming mass on top of him, and a few more incredibly painful blinks of his eyes got that to resolve itself into Gibson, two or three Gibsons, who had apparently clambered up out of the pile and were slugging Urbina in the stomach while they were all still on top of Pudge. It was shockingly inappropriate behavior for a coach, but characteristic behavior for Gibson, who had never pretended to be anything other than a pugnacious old-school former ballplayer first, and a coach second.

Pudge pushed at Urbina, weakly at first, then more strongly, working his way out from under. There was nowhere for him to really go; a pack of shouting Tigers still filled the aisle behind him. He turned over so that he was on all fours facing the floor and grappled with the pain in his head for a while, but it was a losing battle. The plane lurched again and he retched, pain searing across the front of his face, the smell of sweat and alcohol pouring off of Urbina in reeking waves. The plane turned red-washed, then red and black dappled, then lost its distinctness altogether and faded out to a dull, headachy gray.

**

Someone was wiping at his face. It hurt quite a lot, but when he reached up to swat the offending hand away, his hand was caught easily in a firm grip. His eyes were still closed, which probably had something to do with that.

"Sit still," said a familiar voice. He could not place it immediately, and it was not until he felt the hand firmly tipping his chin up to wipe something there that he realized it was Rand. There were few ballplayers who could handle another guy's body with that sort of tactile confidence; a trainer's touch was always distinctive.

"What--" he started, meaning to ask what had happened, but opening his mouth made him aware that there was blood all down the back of his throat and on the base of his tongue, which made him gag, cough, then bend over with a series of body-shaking dry heaves. All this just made his head hurt even more, which made him gag again.

Rand was saying something. Pudge managed to slow his coughing with what felt like an enormous effort. "Hold still, hold still, goddammit," Rand muttered, voice betraying the thinning patience of a man who has repeated himself many, many times.

There was a little rattling sound, followed by an aerosol spritz. His face was briefly splashed with cold, which turned into tingling, then a cool and comprehensive numbness.

"Ah, I shouldn'tve put that on your face," Rand said, conversationally. Pudge managed to crack one eye open to peer blearily at him. There was a hand up by his face again, wiping at something, but he couldn't feel it anymore. He couldn't feel most of the pain anymore either, though. "Had to get you to settle down somehow," Rand added. "Keep thrashin' around like that, we'll never get this fixed."

A bottle floated up into Pudge's limited field of view. "Anesthetic," Rand explained. "Spray-on. So long's you don't cover your head in plastic, it probably won't kill you." Pudge went to nod-- he recognized it as the stuff they used in the dugout on guys who'd been hit by a pitch-- and thought better of it, circling his thumb and forefinger into a shaky OK instead. The bottle exited frame left, and a long-needled syringe floated up in its place. "Our special little clubhouse blend of anti-inflammatories. This'll take the swelling down. It's not exactly indicated for this kinda thing, but it probably won't do too much harm. Coach doesn't want Joe Q Fan seein' our guys with their faces all swollen up after a team fight. We got some cream stuff, some makeup stuff, you can wear it when you're facin' the public, it'll cover up the bruising. This--" the syringe disappeared, replaced by a broad splint--"is what you'll wear when you aren't at the park, to fix it up. Should heal straight, nothing got displaced."

"Heal what?" Pudge asked, trying very, very hard to ignore the metallic taste on the back of his tongue. He cautiously opened his other eye. Rand was fuzzy, out of focus, but more or less visible in front of him. They were both sitting on the floor. He thought they might be at the back of the plane.

"Your nose. You got a broken nose, bud," the Rand-blob said, "you'n Rondell both, and Brandon's lucky he doesn't have a full set o'broken ribs on him, and it'd be more time than I'd be willing to spend to list out the damage on Ugie. Now hold still and let's see if we can't get you photo-ready by the end of this flight."

The syringe hove into view again. He knew he wouldn't be able to feel it, but Pudge closed his eyes anyways.

**

All three of them played in the first game of the LA series: Pudge and Rondell White with their broken noses, Inge with his bruised body. They lost, but that was mostly Bonderman's fault, giving up five runs in six innings. It was a mercifully quick game, just over two hours, leaving Pudge pathetically grateful, because he was running on fumes and tiny amphetamine pills out there, something in which he did not often indulge, and not the sort of thing that would last. He could not imagine that White and Inge were in much better shape.

Urbina pitched in the second game. It was not a very critical situation; the Tigers were already up by four. Pudge squatted on his haunches behind the plate and tried to give out the signs like normal, to forget the last time he had sincerely looked Urbina in the face (distorted almost to unrecognizability with rage), his only real goal to keep from wincing every time Urbina threw a pitch. He managed it, just barely, and that only because Kyle Farnsworth had pitched the previous inning. Farnsworth regularly threw at 100 miles per hour and over. After that, even a ball wielded by a violently unstable drunk didn't seem quite as dangerous.

"We can't keep doing this," Inge said, pulling Pudge aside in the locker room after the game. "I saw how it was out there today, when he was throwing. And I c'n tell you, I didn't wanna be playing behind him anymore'n you wanted t'be catching him. The team can't play like that."

"I know," Pudge said. He picked up the pot of tinted concealer that he had gotten from the trainer and headed for the bathroom. Inge trailed behind him. Farnsworth was holding forth in the locker room, telling some incredibly graphic story involving groupies, alcohol, and unlikely lime wedge applications. Nobody so much as glanced at them. Pudge had gotten very good, over the years, at disappearing unnoticed into bathrooms with teammates. One of those vital skills he never would have imagined himself mastering, back with Tulsa.

He stopped in front of the long bank of mirrors that backed the bathroom sinks, set the pot down, unscrewed its lid. Very, very gingerly he spread the concealer across the bridge of his nose, under and around his eyes, and began working it in. Inge leaned a hip on the sink next to him, arms folded carefully across his chest, watching in silence.

"Front office guys know," he said, dipping his fingers into the pot for more concealer. It was going to take a lot, until warm compresses and time faded the bruising.

Inge snorted sharply, then cringed as the motion brought some fresh little pain to his ribs. That he was so sensitive after spoke wonders about whatever Rand was giving him to get him through the game. "So they know. They gonna _do_ something about it?"

Pudge shrugged. "Have to. Before it was… we can put up with him as a crazy fuckhead, but he still has to be good, he has to be, you know, good enough so it is a balance with the bad. But now, after this, the bad weighs more than the good."

"They shoulda dumped him before now, though. Lotsa people saw this coming."

"Maybe." Pudge shrugged again, looking sidelong at Inge. Maybe he had heard the bathroom fight back in Detroit after all. Somehow it didn't much matter, now.

"They can't bitch us out for gettin' into fights on the plane when they're the ones who let it get t'that point," Inge muttered. "And they can't expect t'keep sweeping it under the rug now."

"They know that. They'll do something."

"OK, but… if they don't… willya talk to 'em? Like, tell 'em what you think 'bout it and all?"

"Of course," Pudge said. Inge gave him an intent, searching look, then nodded. He rubbed at his right side a little, grimacing in a way that Pudge thought he was probably quite unaware of doing. It said something that Inge came to him automatically when he thought someone might need to talk to the front office, and it said something else that Pudge could accept that without batting an eyelash.

**

As it turned out, he never did have to talk to the front office, because the very next day the front office traded Urbina to Philadelphia.

They had an off-day so that they could fly from Los Angeles to Denver. Everyone was a little tense at the airport-- the idea of getting on a plane with Urbina again was not something any of them looked forward to, really-- but Urbina never showed. Pudge stood next to Trammell and tried to look like he knew what was going on, but all he knew was that Trammell wasn't acting concerned or angry, so Urbina's absence must not have been unexpected. He was briefly tempted to call Urbina and ask what was up, but that, of course, was not something he did anymore.

When they landed and he turned his phone back on, the messages came pouring in. From Ilitch (which he appreciated), from Boras (who either knew much more than he was letting on, or was more clueless than Pudge could imagine), from a whole slew of Detroit reporters, and even one from Rogers ("Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Call me, ya poof,").

The Phillies had one second baseman too many, and the Tigers were eager to get rid of Urbina. Given those facts, it was a fairly simple trade. There was nothing _physically_ wrong with Urbina beyond a few scrapes and a fresh set of bruises; teams had to disclose injuries, but Pudge didn't think there was anything in the rules about disclosing alcoholism or psychosis or whatever Urbina's problem was.

"Heard we traded Ugie," Pena said, sidling up to him on the pavement outside the airport, where they were waiting for the buses that would take them to the hotel. Pudge nodded, rubbing his forearms. It had been hot in LA, but Denver was cool and damp, the air worn altitude-thin, and his jacket was buried somewhere at the bottom of his bag.

"You know who we got?" Pena asked.

"Placido Polanco. He's--"

"I know who he is. He's from _La República_ ," Pena added, by way of explanation. Following the careers of players from the Dominican was something Pena did obsessively, despite the fact that he had lived in the US since he was a young teenager. Maybe because of that. It was cute, and Pudge could only thank the Baseball Gods yet again that Pena was so resolutely straight.

"So, a new second baseman. And Ugie is gone. Off the team, out of the league." It was a definite relief, a release of tension in his shoulders that he hadn't even consciously known he'd been holding there. Polanco would get to start in Detroit; in Philadelphia he had been blocked behind Chase Utley, some kind of superinfielder on whom the Phillies were heaping all their second base hopes. Urbina had a whole new set of teammates to terrorize, a familiar circuit of NL East city bars to rot his brains in. It was probably a good move for everyone.

The first bus rolled up, big tires white-stained with the dust of the road. There was some jostling to get in line; nobody wanted to wait out in the cold for the rest of the buses to show. Farnsworth, using his considerable strength to push through the crowd, got on first. Pudge hung back. Normally he would be right up there, exercising his veteran rights, but the fresh mountain air was starting to actually feel good on his nose.

"Fuck!" Farnsworth shouted, loud enough for the rest of the team to hear. "They got us the buses without any damn TVs!"

"It's twenty fuckin' minutes to the hotel," Bonderman grumbled, coming up the steps behind him. "We can make it."

Farnsworth must have said something back, because Pudge could see Bonderman shake his head in that slow way he had, but Farnsworth wasn't yelling anymore and it wasn't audible out on the curb. Inge brushed past, head down as he fussed with his phone, getting the trade details, other bits of news from around the league. He was grinning to himself, cheerfully dragging his team duffle on the ground behind him so that he would not have to pull its strap over his bruised shoulders or chest.

There was a gentle exhalation right behind him. "Pudge. I was wondering if I could perhaps talk to you on the ride over?"

He almost jumped off the lip of the curb, Maroth had snuck up so quietly. Or not snuck up-- that was just how Maroth moved. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself, aware that Pena was watching with amusement. "Sí, sure. Sure. You want to talk, what. Rockies?" Maroth was starting the first game of the Colorado series.

Maroth nodded solemnly. "Thank you, Pudge. I appreciate your willingness to work with me." Pudge rolled his eyes at Pena and nodded for Maroth. Coming from someone else he might have been offended by the stiff, almost awkward wording, but Maroth always talked like that. Pena made an exaggerated _sorry, dude_ face and wandered off to find someone else he could sit with on the bus.

News of the trade was percolating slowly but surely through the team as guys who didn't check their phones, or couldn't get service up in the mountains, heard from the guys who did and could. Not one face that Pudge could see looked disappointed, which was rare-- usually there was at least one guy who was unhappy that his buddy had been traded away-- but Urbina had been a special situation unto himself, by the end, and maybe Pudge had been the only one who ever would have missed him anyways.

**

Failing to make the playoffs was never something he enjoyed, of course, but the upside was that he got to leave Detroit (cold, wet, dark) and return to Miami, which was just starting to come into its own as the humidity died down and the warmth became enjoyable again. It was November, school season, which gave him and Maribel plenty of time to themselves. It had been months since they had had that much time together; he was enthusiastically making the most of it.

The chef didn't show up until lunch. Not that she couldn't-- she had offered full-day services when Pudge had hired her-- but he had never been one for complicated breakfasts, and he liked the mornings to be just family, moving around the enormous kitchen with Maribel slapping his hands away from frying pans, coaxing the kids to eat whatever pseudo-breakfast food they were grudgingly willing to eat that day. Once the kids had gone, piled into one of the cars so that the driver could take them to school, he sat with Maribel at the table, drinking coffee and orange juice and eating eggs, because he was supposed to be loading up on protein in the offseason.

//Pool today?// Maribel asked, leaning her chin on one hand and gazing out the huge windows, which showed off the expensive landscaping (three gardeners to maintain it, not counting the mowing crew, which was rarely the same group of guys twice) and the electrically blue south Florida sky.

//Sure,// Pudge said. It wasn't as if he had anything else to do.

Hours later he dozed on his favorite poolside lounge chair, sunglasses tinting the world brownish whenever he bothered to open his eyes. The sun was warm on his face, his chest, his legs. Maribel lay in the chair next to him, a white bikini gleaming against her skin. The soft little roll of fat just above her hips, shifting gently with the rhythm of her breathing, would have been enough to drive Pudge insane if he hadn't already fucked her twice in the pool that day. The underwater pool ledge was just the right height for her to sit on his lap, breasts floating, beautifully supported, something to watch while the water distorted his view of the thrust and roll of her hips against his.

The pool boy was doing something with a poled net on the far side of the pool, shoulders dipping and straining. He was an absolutely stereotypical pool boy, lightly muscled and naturally shirtless in the heat. Pudge teased Maribel about the pool boy all the time, but in truth, when the pool boy was around he worried more about himself than Maribel.

His phone, on the table between their chairs, buzzed. He reached across for it, turning the motion into a languid stretch. The polarization on his sunglasses made it impossible to see the screen, but that was fine.

//Pudge! God, man, you hear?//

//Hear what? Who's this?// he asked, quiet so as to not wake Maribel.

//It's Juan, Jesus Pudge, you haven't heard yet? About Ugie…//

Juan Gonzalez, then. His first thought was that Urbina had _said something_ , but if that was the case he probably would have heard from Boras before he heard from Gonzalez. His second thought was for the dangers of Venezuela, where kidnappings and ransoms were almost as common as robberies in Miami, and where Urbina was almost certainly spending his offseason. Urbina's mother had been kidnapped at the end of 2004 and had been held in a fucking mountain cave for five months before she was rescued. It was the kind of country where anything could have happened.

//No, I… no, heard what?//

//They arrested him,// Gonzalez said, sounding breathless. //They're saying he, he set someone on _fire_ , he tried to kill a guy with a _machete_.//

//Wait, _what_?//

Maribel turned her head towards him, sunglasses hiding her eyes, leaving her face expressionless. Pudge sat up, pressing the phone more firmly to his ear, like that would make Gonzalez's story come through more clearly.

//I don't know, I don't know, I only know what Rosman told me,// Gonzalez said. //It's all over the news down there, they were guys who worked for him, he has that farm, all that land? And I don't know, they were stealing from him or trying to get into his house or something, and he came after them, I mean, his whole family is there, he went after them with a, a fucking machete, I guess you keep those around in Venezuela, I don't fucking know. And somehow he had a can of gasoline and he set one of the guys on fire, or something?//

//What the fuck,// Pudge said, because he could not for the life of him think of anything else to say. //This just happened?//

//The actual… the actual thing, it happened last week, or a few weeks ago, I think. I don't know. He was just arrested last night, that's what Rosman said, so it's all coming out now.//

//Mother of God,// Pudge mumbled. He shook his head, letting the sunglasses fall down a little so that he could grasp the bridge of his nose. //Did he actually… kill any of them?// Maribel sat up sharply, swinging her legs over the side of her chair.

//I don't know. I don't think so. But that's still, I mean, attempted murder…//

//What the fuck. What the… just, what the fuck? We knew he was… the Tigers knew he was not OK, but this is…//

//Iván?// Maribel leaned towards him, raised a hand tentatively towards his shoulder.

//Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how crazy you have to be to do that, but it's… that's pretty crazy, I mean, right?// A noise came over Gonzalez's end, a hard swallow or something similar. //I don't know how fast this is going to get out, I only know because Rosman called me--// Rosman, Pudge was belatedly remembering, must be Rosman Garcia, a nobody of a Rangers middle reliever who just happened to have played with both Gonzalez and Urbina, and happened to be Venezuelan-- //but I wanted to tell you, because… because… just in case, I thought you should…//

//I. Thanks.// It wasn't as if he had ever told Gonzalez. But they had been friends for around twenty years now, between Texas and Puerto Rico before it. Closer when they were playing together, less close when they were on different teams, but at this point there was enough history behind them to make that unimportant. //Thanks,// he said again. He couldn't exactly say more with Maribel sitting right next to him.

//No problem,// Gonzalez said quietly. //You were… I mean, you know, the first thing I thought of.//

//Call me if you hear more?//

//Yeah. You do the same.//

//Sure.// He closed the phone and pushed it across the table, leaning forward with his legs up, arms around his shins. Maribel got up and sat on the edge of his chair, rubbing his back. She would ask about it again in a few minutes, but for now she was silent.

Urbina had been arrested. He had attacked someone with a machete. A machete! It was like something out of a bad movie. And now he was, what, detained? In jail? What little Pudge knew about the Venezuelan prison system was not good, but maybe they would keep Urbina separate from the general population, in deference to his status as a professional baseball player. Or maybe he could bribe them; he would certainly have more money than the average prisoner there.

He tried to imagine it properly, Urbina in a Venezuelan prison. He couldn't do it. The sky in Miami was clear, the sun high, the pool absolutely pristine. The carefully scripted vegetation surrounding it was all oversized leaves and blowsy flowers. A flock of the bright green monk parakeets that lived wild all over the area had settled in a tree and were squawking at each other. The sun beat down warmly on his back, reinforced by the warm sensation of Maribel's hand moving over his skin.

Somewhere out there a Venezuelan farmer lay bleeding from machete wounds. Somewhere out there, Urbina was in prison. Maybe he was being harassed by the police, or his fellow prisoners. They would know who he was; maybe he was having to fight to keep them off. Maybe he was alone in a room with whatever disturbingly dark shape his thoughts had taken. Maybe he was thinking about Pudge, although he probably wasn't.

Across the way, the pool boy swept his net through the water slowly and easily, going through the motions of clearing away debris that wasn't there. Pudge pressed his fingertips into his forehead as hard as he could, trying focus on something that made some kind of sense.

 **2006**

Another spring, another season: his sixteenth now, and he could still get excited for the first day of spring training, that beautifully groomed infield grass, baseball with Ivanna pressing her face into the fence to watch him because the Tigers trained in Florida and she could be there to watch it. The chance to meet a whole new group of pitchers. Or old pitchers-- Rogers, who had been back in Texas, signed with Detroit in the offseason. Pudge liked to think that he had had a lot to do with that. The money Detroit had offered had been good, but Rogers had made almost as much money his second time through Texas; the money alone would not have meant _that_ much.

Rand gave him a thorough entrance exam, huffing lightly over Pudge's weight like he'd been doing the past couple of years (Pudge had made a habit of ignoring him-- they'd been calling him Pudge for almost twenty years, for God's sake, it was his _name_ ), jerking the ruler up a couple inches past the top of Pudge's head to fudge his height for the press packets. He checked Pudge's back and knees very, very carefully, double checking when he couldn't find whatever damage he had been expecting.

Well, Pudge had been lucky when it came to injuries. All those years at catcher, a position that beat most guys into the ground by season ten-- if they even made it to a tenth season, which most of them never did. He'd seen those old catchers, the forty year old men who moved like they were twice that age. There were horror stories about knee surgeries, vertebral fusings, transplantations of tendons, insertions of metal plates and pins and artificial hip sockets, things the old backups muttered to each other over the water cooler in the dugout to scare the rookies.

Sure, his knees hurt a little more than they once had, clicking in the mornings when he got out of bed. His back was definitely more painful, a constant low-grade ache where he had never had any lingering pain before, but that was well within his tolerances. He had acquired some weird scars in strange places: an oval cluster of points on the back of one shoulder where he'd been stepped on by a Mariner wearing metal-capped cleats; a slight discoloration on the inside of his left thigh, a mark left from a fastball strike that had never entirely gone away; the one fingernail on his right hand that wouldn't grow in properly anymore. But those were just souvenirs. In veteran-catcher-terms, he was practically pristine.

"Don't think I've ever seen this," Rand said. He was admiring a series of X-rays that he'd stuck up to the training room's lightboard. "Look at this knee. The wear on the bone here! Like the knee of a third year."

"Does not exactly _feel_ like it did, my third year," Pudge grumbled.

Rand traced a finger reverently around a glowing X-ray patella. "That's the soft tissue talking. Still. This? Is a thing o'beauty."

Pudge rolled his eyes and kicked his legs, drumming on the exam table base with his heels. Rand waved him out absently, not taking his eyes off of the X-rays. It was a little creepy.

Out on the field, the sun beat down, warmly Florida-familiar. He ran the presumed starters through their paces. The coaches wanted to look at Bonderman's curveball, and Rogers had to learn the pitch signs (different from the ones Pudge had used with him on the Rangers, of course). There was debate over whether or not Maroth would be starting, so the coaches had to see him work, and Pudge had to catch those sessions, because it wasn't fair to judge Maroth against some infant catcher who barely knew what he was doing.

And there was the new pitcher, Justin Verlander. His brief service in the previous year had not been enough to count as a real rookie season, leaving behind the lingering aftertaste of a passable fastball and nothing to support it; almost the very definition of a rookie who needed more time in the minors. Ilitch, through Trammell, had asked Pudge for his opinion. His opinion was that Verlander (tall, awkward, skinny) needed to put on some weight and build some muscle if he was going to keep throwing those fastballs.

So when he overheard Verlander complaining to Ledezma about the weight lifting workout routine the team had had him on all winter ("Brutal, man," Verlander said, "just, like, the most brutal"), he grinned to himself and made a mental note to tell Rogers later. Torturing the rookies before he even met them properly. It was the sort of thing Rogers would appreciate.

**

Really, the amount of luck surrounding every aspect of his life was insane. He'd signed on with Detroit when they were still considered something of a joke, but this 2006 team was no joke at all, and just over two months into the season, everyone knew it. This was a good team, a team with the potential for greatness. Part of that was smart management, but a lot of it was luck.

He was lucky to have the family that he had. Three spectacular kids, all fully bilingual, able recite the infield fly rule from memory, all of whom were healthy, _gracias a Dios_. He had Maribel, who was, if he was honest, most of the reason for the spectacular kids. Not that he didn't do his part, of course, but when a guy had to do most of his contributing from at least a thousand miles away, it was a lucky, lucky thing that the other contributor should be able to pick up the slack so adroitly.

He was lucky to have screwed up so many times in such a potentially career-destroying way-- Ryan, Urbina-- and to still have a career. Sometimes he lay awake at night staring at the ceiling, wondering why Urbina hadn't said anything yet. It wasn't like Urbina had anything left to lose. But maybe it was a bad thing, to let it get around that you voluntarily did things like that with other men, when you were in prison in Venezuela. He couldn't really even begin to guess.

Lucky, lucky. Lucky that he had good friends for nights like this one, when he was trashed out of his mind in some impossibly slick Toronto bar, one cheek pressed flat to the smooth cool bartop, mumbling about how lucky he was in every way.

Rogers scuffed a hand affectionately over his head. "Wanna get lucky some more? Some girls over there, look like they'd go home if you asked."

"What'f I don' wanna girl tonight? What'f I want a, a boy? Or both? Eh?"

"Public, quiet," Rogers murmured, very quiet himself, rubbing Pudge's head again. Pudge closed his eyes and sighed through his nose. Rogers had such nice big hands, big strong pitcher's fingers.

He cracked an eye to watch the girls for a while, not bothering to lift his head from the bar. They were attractive in that standard groupie sort of way-- the obviously-artificially-straightened hair, the heavy eye makeup, the low-cut tops and short, short, short skirts. Nothing wrong with that; it was kind of comforting, the consistency. It would take him, he estimated, ten minutes to get the prettiest one into the backroom (he had never been in this particular bar before, but there would be a backroom, there was always a backroom), on her knees, or turned around straight up against the wall.

He'd walk over, smile, put a hand on her arm. Say, "Hi, I play baseball." The girl would smile in return, put a hand on him somewhere, his back or a hip, say, "Oh, _really_?" Maybe a comment about how it was too bad he wasn't a hockey player, but that would just be a joke, a little momentary tease to remind him which city this was again, and that would be a good thing, there were so many baseball cities and he ended up in all of them sooner or later. Thus established, he'd buy her a drink. She'd finish it, giggle, maybe stumble against him a little, and off they'd go, headed for that inevitable backroom.

But tonight-- no. Tempting, always tempting, but no. He missed Maribel, and he missed the faint itch of Beckett's underlip scruff dragging across his stomach. He missed the power of Ryan's hands hard on his shoulders, even though he'd only felt that a couple of times, so many years ago. He felt like hanging onto that empty feeling a little. That ache. They had been playing so well lately, maybe it was good to remind himself that nobody could be _that_ lucky, not even him.

"Well?" Rogers asked.

"Nah. You go 'head if you want, I will jus' stay here and. Watch."

"Kinky, but no." Rogers dug his fingers into Pudge's shoulder. "Someone's gotta keep an eye on your drunk ass."

"Don' lemme hold you back, man, you wanna get some ass you shoul' go for it, they're there, you got it, you go right 'head--"

"You're babblin'."

"M'not," Pudge muttered, mouth an inch off the bartop.

"Mmm. C'mon." Rogers tugged at his shoulder. Pudge peeled up slowly, his cheek making a sticky sound as it separated from the bar. Rogers tossed a wad of bills down, nodded at the bartender, and pushed Pudge towards the door. He didn't even glance at the group of girls as they passed. Which was weird-- hadn't he wanted one? Or had he only been looking for Pudge? Or-- he couldn't remember. Something about groupies. It wasn't important.

Toronto was noisy and bright, stiflingly humid, or maybe that was just the inside of his head. The lights went too far up, way above ground level. Way above ballpark light tower level, which was the natural upper limit that bright lights should reach. It gave him a headache, wincing and stumbling, only Rogers' arm around his shoulders keeping him upright.

"Too good t'me, you're the bes', jus'… too good."

"Ah, where would I be without ya?" Rogers waved the arm not around Pudge, signaling for a cab.

"Gettin' laid, prob'ly." Almost certainly. He felt guilty, but it was a fleeting thing.

"Can do that any ol' time. Anyways, bros before hos, right?"

A cab pulled up, whitish and beaten-looking, wheels unrelieved black without their hubcaps. Rogers hauled the door open and Pudge crawled into the back seat. It smelled dry, like old cigarettes.

"Bros before hos," he agreed. Rogers gave the cabbie their hotel name. "Also bros before bros. Or. Bros before bros I'm fuckin'."

"My god, look at you," Rogers laughed. "You and your fat drunk ass." His eyes had crinkled up at the corners in amusement. He was 41 years old; the lines there were starting to become permanent.

Pudge lifted his hand, pressed it to the side of Rogers' face. All his concentration went to his hand, not wanting to poke Rogers in the eye. Couldn't have that happening, not in the middle of the season, no sir. That was an important thing. Preserve the pitchers: the most important thing there was.

"Look at you," Rogers repeated, still smiling to himself. He did not push Pudge's hand away, but in spite of his words he did not look at him either, staring instead out the window at the dizzying flash of Toronto speeding by, that little smile on his face. After a while Pudge brought his hand down, and a little while after that he was thinking about Beckett again, thinking about a headful of tousled black hair in his lap, a power-pitching hand twisted in the sheets next to him, and Rogers was just a convenient soft thing, there to take his weight as he listed to the side.

**

Trammell had been fired at the end of the '05 season, for a whole host of reasons. Pudge had probably been responsible for some of it, insofar as he had played a role in the whole Urbina thing, and sure, maybe there had been a few instances where he talked to Ilitch instead of bothering with the low-level authority of a manager first, which he supposed must have reflected poorly on Trammell. But he was not too bothered about it. _He_ hadn't been responsible for the badness of the team as a whole, and it wasn't ever _his_ fault that Trammell had had to deal with that, inexperienced and unprepared. Those were facts set in place long before he had arrived.

The new manager, Jim Leyland, was a clear and direct reaction to all the things that had gone wrong with Trammell. Where Trammell had been soft and uncertain, Leyland was hard and dead sure. Trammell had put up with a lot of shit from all of them, had let himself be pushed around and overruled and generally ignored. He had wanted to be friends with the guys on the team much more than he had wanted to be their manager. Poor Trammell, he knew a lot more about being one of the guys than he could possibly know about managing them. Not that that was surprising; Trammell was still so close to his own playing history. He had still been playing for the first six years of Pudge's career.

Leyland did not care about being anybody's friend, and wasn't about to take any crap from any of them. By the time Trammell stopped being a baseball player, Leyland had already been a big league manager for eleven seasons-- he was very obviously long since over wanting to be friends with his players. He treated Pudge exactly the same as he treated everyone else, which was mostly as if they were individually annoying pieces of dog shit stuck to the bottoms of his cleats.

When Leyland told Pudge to see him after the game, he didn't even _think_ about sneaking out, leaving early, making a run for it, even though there had been no breeze at all in the ballpark that night, which had made him sticky and irritable, and Rogers' short, four-inning outing had only amplified that. The combination would have been more than enough to make him inclined to blow off a Trammell meeting.

"Sit," Leyland said. Pudge had barely poked his head into the office. He was still damp from his postgame shower and the hair at the back of his neck was going to drip down into his collar and onto the back of the chair, but he sat. Leyland eyed him from across the desk. His face was practically statuary, each wrinkle creasing down his cheeks as precise as if it had been carved out of stone. Somehow, without moving it, his mustache managed to bristle threateningly.

"Ten runs for us tonight. That's a lot."

"Uh, yes sir."

"Might not get that many tomorrow."

"I guess maybe not."

"Ain't my business to guess. I'm _anticipatin'_. And you know Justin's startin' tomorrow night."

"Sí," Pudge said, cautiously. He was starting to get the horrible feeling that this conversation would end with more busy-work for him, but he was not quite sure why that should be. Verlander already had ten wins, just four losses. His fastball was a joy to catch, his offspeed stuff just good enough to keep the fastball usable. He was not exactly struggling through his rookie year.

Leyland picked up a cigarette and twirled it neatly over his knuckles. "You'll write up a set of notes about the lineup you dealt with tonight. Tomorrow, you'll meet up with Justin before the park opens and go over it with him. Don't care where you do it, just get it done."

"Excuse me, not to question, but…" Pudge paused, wondering how much diplomacy was worth trying on Leyland. "Verlander is, you know, he is having a good season. These are, ah, the _Royals_. I do not think he needs--"

"I don't really give a fuck what you think he needs," Leyland said quietly. Pudge was shocked into silence. "I didn't ask you what you think he needs. I'm tellin' you what he needs, and what you need to do. Now." He produced a lighter that he absolutely was not supposed to have in the park, lit the cigarette and brought it to his mouth for a long drag. He exhaled, expertly directing the smoke out the corner of his mouth, away from Pudge, where it was sucked up by the wall vent. "I'll explain my reasonin' just this once, but you damn well better not expect it every time.

"Justin's been pitchin' good. OK, sure. Nobody's gonna deny that. But he's twenty-three-goddamn years old and this is his rookie-goddamn-season. It doesn't matter how good he's goin', the kid's got no idea how to deal with success. He's gonna be thinkin' just like you: oh, this is just the Royals, oh, we beat 'em bad Friday, my game's gonna be a _snap_ \--" he snapped his fingers for emphasis, making Pudge twitch-- "nothin' to it. Now, _you_ think that and somethin' happens, it goes to shit, fine. You've been around, you bounce back. But _he_ can't start thinkin' like that, or he's gonna fall down, and he's just a kid, he ain't used to it, so when he falls down he's gonna fall down hard and maybe he don't get up so quick.

"Now that's what you're for. You're gonna let him know that you think his punk ass needs to come back down to Planet Earth and study, even if it's for the Royals, even if we're goin' good and he's goin' good. You're gonna show him that there ain't no such thing as goin' so good that you're allowed to slack. I don't care if he's Pedro fuckin' Martinez, I don't care if he's Nolan fuckin' Ryan--" Pudge twitched again, although Leyland, thankfully, did not seem to notice-- "and I don't care if he's Cy fuckin' Young himself come back from the dead, that's the way it's gonna be on this team. That's my message, and you're the messenger who's gonna make damn sure he gets it. Got it?"

Pudge nodded rapidfire, and bolted as soon as Leyland lifted his hand at the start of a _go on, get outta my office_ gesture.

Verlander had already left-- he'd barely dressed for the game, and probably hadn't stuck around to shower after-- so Pudge sighed and got the kid's number out of Joel Zumaya, their burly fire-balling middle reliever, who was even younger than Verlander and was also stumbling wide-eyed through his rookie year.

Rookies everywhere, and every year it felt like they were getting younger and younger. Pudge had been four years younger than Verlander when he made his rookie debut, but he was pretty sure that, somehow, in some impossible-to-define but fundamental way, he had been older at nineteen than Verlander was at twenty-three.

**

Verlander walked into Pudge's apartment wide-eyed, obviously not much experienced with anything other than shabby rookie bachelor pads. Pudge allowed him a few minutes to wander, gaping at the framed photos on the walls of Pudge standing with Gold Gloves in his hands (the Gold Gloves themselves up on a shelf back home in Miami, of course), before he gently steered him towards the dining room table, where he had laid out his notes on the Royals. Verlander sat willingly enough, although he frowned when he saw the papers.

"Probable lineup for tonight," Pudge explained, tapping a paper with the list of names on it. He waved a hand over the rest. "Notes on all these guys. We go over them, then the guys on the bench. How much detail for the bench guys, depends on how much time we have."

"I don't… I mean, what? I don't need this."

"I think I will be the judge of that." Verlander opened his mouth, but Pudge was not going to have _that_. He was not about to let a rookie think he could always object and get his own way. "Oh, what you are about to say, I know. Don't care, I have heard it a million time before. We will go over all dis, and we will do it because _I say we will_ , you will shut up and do it, we will win a game, everything will work nice, smooth, and I am not goin' to hear a complaint out of you. ¿ _Entiendes_?"

Verlander slowly shut his mouth and slumped very slightly down in his seat. He stared at Pudge with eyes that had gone a little glassy, unfocused.

"OK?" Pudge asked. The expression on Verlander's face was disturbing in its familiarity, but he could not immediately place it. He had seen it before, or one very much like it; maybe not on Verlander's face, but he _had_ seen it…

"I. Yeah. Yeah, OK." Verlander shook his head like he was trying to clear it, scruffed a thumb down one sideburn. "I, um. Yeah. That's… sure, if you say so."

Pudge eyed him suspiciously, but if Verlander was fucking around with him, it was at least not immediately obvious how, so he set it aside for the time being and sorted the papers to start looking them over. He prompted Verlander to ask questions at pertinent points until Verlander had recovered enough from-- whatever-- to ask on his own.

The kid was not stupid, and he already had a good sense of what questions to ask: what Pudge thought they should do to address Joey Gathright's speed on the basepaths, whether or not there were any circumstances under which they would pitch around David DeJesus, what signs they should use when John Buck (the catcher, thus the greatest sign-stealing danger) was batting or on second base. Once he seemed to accept that this was how he was going to be spending his day, he settled right into it, leaning across the table in his eagerness to scrawl strikezone diagrams in margins, to demonstrate changeup grips on wads of discarded paper. The afternoon passed so quickly that Pudge was surprised when he glanced at his watch and saw the time.

"C'mon." He pulled the paper Verlander had been looking at out from under his nose and swept it together with the others into the center of the table. Verlander looked up, blinking in comical surprise. "Almos' time to head to the park."

"Oh. Was that…" Verlander stood, his long frame turning the motion into a highly complex unfolding procedure. "Was that… I mean, that was enough, right? I did OK?"

"You already win ten games this year," Pudge said softly. "Sí, you did OK, an' tonight you will do fine."

"If you know I already… then why… nevermind." Verlander bit his lip and shot a look at Pudge from under his eyelashes, a look that would have been too weird from almost any other ballplayer, but just barely worked coming from a rookie.

"Because I say so," Pudge muttered, putting a hand low on Verlander's side to shove him out of the apartment. Verlander tensed under his fingers, resisting for a moment, so that Pudge had to lean into him just a bit to get him moving.

Interesting. But Pudge gave him a sharper nudge with the points of his knuckles, and Verlander walked out of the door readily enough. Pudge turned back for his equipment bag.

"Hey, uh, I dunno how to get to the ballpark from your place," Verlander called.

Pudge rolled his eyes at the empty apartment. God save him from common-sense-deficient rookies. "So you follow me."

"Oh. 'Course." Verlander sheepishly trailed behind as Pudge brushed past him to lead the way to the elevator.

They won the game, 6-0. Verlander pitched seven innings of two-hit ball, mowing down Royals with such simple, easy confidence that it made Pudge's chest ache to see it. Verlander's fastballs were something between pure power and pure artistry-- they straddled that line with the delicacy of the platonic ideal of a fastball, the thing that every fastball aspired to be. The Royals didn't stand a chance, and for once it was not just because they were the Royals.

In the dugout between innings Verlander sat with him, jacket awkwardly hiked up around his right arm to keep it warm, repeating the things they had talked about earlier that day. He kept sneaking little looks at Pudge, something in the set of his dark expressive eyebrows begging for approval that he had to know he already had.

Leyland nodded at Pudge in the lineup after the game, which was, Pudge knew, as far as he would go to ostensibly recognize the fact that his message had been expertly delivered. It would not have been nearly enough acknowledgement from a manager like Trammell, but from Leyland it was plenty.

**

It was a cloudy Detroit night, the Tigers back home fresh off a north-south Cleveland-Minnesota-Tampa road trip, and Bonderman stumbled early, allowing three runs in the first inning. It was not the first time this had happened when Bonderman was pitching. Pudge set both his hands on Bonderman's shoulders in the dugout and squeezed until Bonderman, sitting on the bench, raised his reluctant eyes to Pudge's own.

"Knock it off," Pudge said.

Bonderman looked away. "Would if I knew what I was doin' wrong."

"Bondo. Jeremy. _Knock it off_."

"I _want_ to… _can't_ …"

"Not good enough." He dug his fingers into Bonderman's thick shoulders, feeling the places where they gave and the places where they pressed back. This was what came of bringing up pitchers before they were ready, doing what had been done to Bonderman back in '03, before Pudge had been on the team to at least soften the blow. There was a right way to bring along a young pitcher, and a wrong way, and everything about the way Bonderman had been handled was wrong, wrong, _wrong_ , and everyone was paying for it now: the team, the relievers, and Trammell had already paid for it, and Bonderman was paying for it most of all.

"M'sorry," Bonderman said. He sounded like he was on the verge of tears.

"Hey. Hey. Look at me." When Bonderman didn't, Pudge grasped his chin and pulled his head around, slow and deliberate so as to not accidentally strain his neck. "You think too much. Next inning, go out and jus' _pitch_."

Bonderman stared at him with pleading eyes; he really _was_ moments away from crying. "I would, I _would_ , it ain't that _easy_ \--"

"I. Bondo. Here." Pudge dropped down into his crouch in front of Bonderman, fitting himself between Bonderman's knees, letting Bonderman _feel_ him as a catcher, that unmistakable and hopefully soothing catcher-shaped presence. He gathered up both of Bonderman's hands in his own. "Look. You go out, you are making a pitch more wit' your head and not your arm. Your arm, he knows what to do, but you are letting the head talk over him. I don' wanna hear shit from your head the rest of the game. OK? I want to hear your arm only."

Bonderman shook his head. Pudge rubbed the big hands, shifting his weight forward a little to lean against Bonderman's legs. "If you start to think wit' your head again, jus' look at me and remember, I will do all the thinking. That is my job. No worries for you about what to throw, what not to throw, how to throw it; that is all for me. You look at me, you empty out the head, jus' let your arm do what he wants to do. OK? OK?"

Bonderman took a deep breath and nodded, eyes closed. His fingers twitched inside the cage of Pudge's hands.

When Pudge stood to get ready for his at-bat, he was surprised to see Verlander, up at the dugout rail, twisted around to stare avidly at whatever sort of tableau he and Bonderman had made. Leyland had watched them out of the corner of his eye, as was his managerial prerogative; most of the other Tigers were politely pretending that they had not been paying attention; but Verlander was looking right at them, not even attempting to hide the direction of his gaze. Pudge narrowed his eyes at him. Verlander ducked his head hastily, like he all of a sudden realized that he had been inappropriate, and turned back around to face the field.

Bonderman pitched better in the second inning, but he had used up so many pitches in the first that it was clear he was not going to last very long. Leyland was already on the dugout phone, mumbling down the line to the bullpen coach. At the end of the inning Pudge slumped onto the bench and sighed, just letting the familiar weight of his catching gear press down on him for a moment before he went through the ritual of unbuckling and unsnapping and removing it all.

**

His backup catcher was a grizzled former Met named Vance Wilson. Literally grizzled: his patchy facial hair, when he let it grow to stubble, was sprinkled all over with gray. He was a year _younger_ than Pudge, though, and had been in the league only half as long; a definite weird twist to the usual starting/backup catcher dynamic.

There were plenty of guys who might have made it awkward ( _Zaun_ , he couldn't help thinking), but Wilson was laid-back, funny in a quiet way, and he seemed to accept the fact that Pudge got more playing time than the average starting catcher. He was certainly capable enough for a backup; he just was not going to get many starts on the same team as Pudge.

Maybe, he told Leyland, Wilson should do some of this pregame prep-work with the pitchers. Nothing on the field, of course-- it would not make much sense for Wilson to prep the pitchers on days Pudge was catching-- but this extra-curricular stuff, the meetings outside of the ballpark, the hours cooped up with Maroth's creepy quietness or Bonderman's unflinching awkwardness or Verlander's uncomfortable enthusiasm, around which Pudge was starting to not trust himself, if he was being honest.

Not that he said as much to Leyland. It was enough that these study sessions were probably well within Wilson's abilities, and the poor bastard should have _something_ to do for the team, something more substantial than catching the rare day game immediately following a Pudge-caught night game, or the less-important half of a double-header.

Leyland frowned, mustache ends dropping. "You tryin' to get outta the off-field work?"

"No! No, I would not ever," Pudge said, which was not exactly true. "But all he does is sit there, I feel bad, you know?"

"Not bad 'nough to let him take some'a your starts…"

"Well. No. But they did not sign me to sit on the bench."

"That _is_ what they signed _him_ for, though. So settle down. Let me worry 'bout who's happy with their playin' time and who just wants t'bitch." Leyland opened a drawer on his side of the desk, pushing stuff around like he was looking for something, not even looking at Pudge anymore. "He warms up the relievers durin' games, that's enough to keep him from gettin' too rusty."

A year ago Pudge probably would have argued the point, but a year ago he had been playing under Alan Trammell. He picked up the pack of cigarettes that was half-buried under the pile of papers on the corner of the desk and pushed them across to Leyland, who shut the drawer and muttered his thanks.

Pudge hooked his thumbs into his pockets, rocked on his heels for a moment, debating, then thought better of it. Leyland knew damn well that Maroth was weird and Bonderman was awkward. He probably knew that Rogers and Pudge spent more time drinking and bullshitting together than studying for games. He either already knew more about whatever Verlander was getting out of the meetings than Pudge did, or he had no idea at all, in which case it was in Pudge's best interests to keep it to himself anyways, wasn't it? What else could he _ever_ have on this team that Leyland wouldn't somehow know about, that he had not somehow orchestrated?

It was not as if he was trying to hide information from his manager. It was not as if he honestly thought he would win if it ever came down to a power struggle between them. But surely it was good-- _prudente_ \-- to keep something back for himself.

**

The bus that took them from the hotel to Fenway Park was unmarked, with tinted windows: a necessity in Boston, where Very Bad Things had been known to happen to visiting players who made the mistake of being recognizable where Boston fans were present (which was, as it happened, everywhere in the city). They could see out, but people outside the bus could not see in, although some experimentation had shown that they could see vague human-shaped outlines if the guy in the window seat pressed right up against the glass.

One day they would invent some sort of direct tunnel system to shuttle players from hotels to ballparks underground, but that day, alas, had not yet arrived. And this was Boston. Traffic was snarled, an epic tangle of irrational streets and irate drivers meeting in a rancorous gridlock. Some of the younger players were speculating about accidents, road closures, something extraordinary to explain it, but long, bitter road trip experience had taught Pudge that this was simply how things went in Boston. Los Angeles too, but these American League kids wouldn't know much about that. Regardless: the bus was stuck. They could not exactly get out and walk. They had no choice but to wait.

Wilson was quietly going over scouting reports with Nate Robertson, who was starting that night. Inge was involved in some kind of deeply annoying slapping game with Chris Shelton. Leyland was up front, chain smoking out the window, which he had cracked the absolute minimum amount possible. Guillen and Magglio Ordonez were playing _I, Spy_ in Spanish. Bonderman was, impossibly, asleep.

Pudge was sitting on the aisle, Rogers at the window next to him, trying to have some approximation of a quiet adult conversation. The delay, the close confines of the bus, the brassy off-key honking surrounding them: all of it was combining into a hot, stabbing pressure at the front of his head. Rogers was clearly not faring much better, his responses growing shorter and more terse by the minute.

Several rows in front of them, something kept happening to make all the Tigers in the vicinity burst out laughing. The first few times it happened Pudge was more or less able to ignore it. They were stuck on a goddamn glorfied tour bus, in what amounted to enemy territory; let the kids have some fun-- even if it was annoying fun. The eleventh time they exploded in shrill rookie laughter, though, grating across his consciousness, Pudge lost any semblance of patience and surged up out of his seat, storming down the aisle to see what the fuck was going on.

Verlander had a window seat and was hard up against the glass, going through a series of contortions like he was being stabbed to death. Pudge could indistinctly see, down on the sidewalk, a number of pedestrians staring at the bus. Undoubtedly trying to work out what on earth was happening to the agonized silhouette they were able to see through the window.

"Do the butt one, do the butt one again," Zumaya chanted, sitting next to Verlander. Curtis Granderson and Jordan Tata, young center fielder and relief pitcher respectively, were hanging off the backs of the seats in front of him, cheering him on. Verlander went into an elaborate pantomime against the window that made it look like he was getting spanked by an invisible hand behind him, sending the others into gales of enthusiastic, impossibly young-sounding laughter.

"Enough!" Pudge barked. Granderson and Tata both immediately disappeared back into their seats. Zumaya froze mid-laugh, mouth hanging open, and Verlander collapsed away from the window like the glass had gone lava-hot, eyes wide. It probably would have been funny if Pudge had not been staggered under the weight of such an enormous headache.

"Seriously, what is this, are you in, in kindergarten? We are _all_ stuck on dis _fucking_ bus, it is not jus' you alone, you cannot _act_ like it is jus' you! _Dios_ , my _son_ did not act up so much when he was a _four year old_! Sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up, save the fucking energy for whenever the hell we get to this _fucking ballpark_!"

Verlander and Zumaya stared at him in stunned silence, eyes and mouths matching shocked circles. There was some scattered applause from the back of the bus.

Pudge put his hands up to his temples. "Jus'… jus' be quiet, and if you have to talk, do it wit'out all of this… hoot and shout. _Dios_."

"OK. _Lo siento_ ," Zumaya said, very quiet. Pudge sighed and flapped a hand at him, _yeah yeah, whatever_. Zumaya winced, then glanced at Verlander, who had slumped down farther in his seat and had gone glassy-eyed, dazed again. Pudge squinted at him. He had seen Verlander look like this before, when Pudge was yelling at him. It was almost as if… almost like he was… almost…

No. "I cannot _even_ deal wit' you rooks right now," he muttered, stomping back to Rogers and quiet and relative sanity.

**

Beckett was one of the Red Sox, his first season ever away from the Marlins. He was already the number two pitcher on the staff, just behind Curt Schilling, who was old and wouldn't last much longer anyways. By this point in the season Beckett had a 13-and-6 record. Verlander was 14-and-5, which didn't really mean anything, except for the way it kind of did.

Pudge spent the whole night before Beckett's start curled up on his hotel bed with every undersized bottle out of the minibar arrayed before him, in a state of hazy terror, trying to imagine batting against Beckett. Being on the wrong end of that curveball. He _knew_ that curveball, knew the spin of its seams, the exact point where it would start to break. He knew Beckett's release point and the spot where his front foot would come down onto the mound. He knew the way Beckett held his shoulders a little bit differently when he was about to throw a fastball. But to hit it, to actually get his bat around on it, make contact, do something other than pop out or hit a weak grounder? He would do it, of course he would, it was his job, but he wasn't entirely certain that he _could_. Standing at the plate in opposition of Beckett seemed like the kind of thing that would leave him destroyed in so many different ways.

He hardly slept, staggered off the bus into the ballpark with his eyes bleary and a faint tremor in his hands, no kind of shape to be in before a big game. The home team always took batting practice first; if he went out onto the field, the Red Sox and Beckett would be there, doing the usual ritualistic pregame stretches on the grass, but trying to talk to Beckett would almost certainly only make things worse.

Leyland tacked up the night's lineup. Pudge went over to look out of habit, skimming down the page for the familiar shape of his name and not finding it. He scanned the lineup again-- a mistake, sure-- no, there was _V. WILSON_ inked in at the absolute bottom of the order, right next to _C_. He had the night off.

Leyland must have thought he needed it. Maybe he had seen some of the tiredness in the pinched muscles of Pudge's back, or maybe it was just some weirdly brilliant flash of managerial intuition. It was just barely possible that someone had noticed, had told Leyland about the sorts of things that had happened back on that unlikely winning Florida team. Leyland had once upon a time managed the Marlins; he still had lots of friends back there. But the potential reasons why didn't matter. He had the night off. He would not have to face Beckett from anywhere other than the visitor's dugout.

Granderson led off the game with a triple to deep right, which was typical for Granderson but not at all typical for Beckett. Pudge leaned forward on the bench, pretending to care about Coach McClendon giving Granderson the signs, really just trying to get a better look at Beckett. Beckett got a new ball from the homeplate umpire and popped it into his glove a few times, glaring down at it.

He ran the count full on Craig Monroe, glancing over to third after every other pitch. The next pitch was a curveball, sloppy, curving far too much, hitting the dirt right at the catcher's feet. The Red Sox, like the Tigers, were going with their backup catcher for this game: Javy Lopez, Juan Gonzalez's brother-in-law. Lopez pounced on the ball to keep it from getting away.

Monroe tossed his bat to the side and trotted down the line, signaling across the diamond to Granderson at third. Beckett raked the front of the mound a bunch of times with one cleat, a bull pawing at the ground. Pudge gave any hope of playing it cool and bounced up to the rail to watch more closely, elbowing Bonderman out of a prime rail position. Bonderman shifted over without complaint.

Batting third was Dmitri Young, who hit a hard ball to right on the very first pitch he saw. Beckett spun on his heel, every furiously quivering inch of his body language screaming out to Pudge that he _just could not fucking believe_ this was happening to him. Granderson trotted home easily. The ball rolled to the right fielder, who tried to pick it up and bobbled it. Monroe alertly took third.

Beckett turned back around. The look on his face sent a jolt like a lightning bolt straight through Pudge, even though he was almost eighty feet away and behind a padded railing, even though Beckett wasn't looking at him.

He threw four pitches to Ordonez before he let loose with a wild one. Pudge winced; Lopez had no hope of even touching it. Monroe came scampering home from third. The ball had bounced so far away that even Young, who was very fat and very slow, could make it to second base. The Tigers were already up by two and Beckett had not yet recorded a single out.

A couple of groundouts advanced Young the final two bases, bringing the score up to 3-0. Sean Casey flew out to end the inning. Beckett was storming off the mound while Casey was still standing at the plate, trying to undo his shinguard. Lopez tried to stop him, say something conciliatory, Pudge could recognize damage control when he saw it, but Beckett shrugged him off and marched down the dugout steps, Red Sox scattering out of his way. Intelligently, as it turned out: Beckett took off his glove and whipped it as hard as he could down the entire length of the dugout. Terry Francona, the Boston manager, hurried over to put his hands on Beckett's shoulders and his body between Beckett and the field, shielding him from camera lenses and from the eyes of everyone but his own teammates.

"He looks like a National Leaguer today," Monroe announced, back in the visitor's dugout. He picked up two gloves and tossed one to Granderson, who had been standing there, looking around helplessly. "NL all the way, fellas. Take advantage."

That was tempting Beckett and fate both; Pudge wanted to tell Monroe to shut the hell up, he knows what he's doing out there, don't call him that, but it was not exactly the sort of thing he could say where the whole team could hear. He tightened his hands around the rail, padding crumpling under his palms.

The Red Sox were third in their division and the Tigers were in first in theirs. He wasn't playing and Beckett wasn't pitching like an ace. It was like he'd fallen into some bizarro alternate dimension.

Beckett settled down some and managed to make it through six more or less steady innings, but the Tigers tacked on a couple of runs in the third, and by the time Beckett left, the worst of the damage had already been done. Pudge watched from the rail and thought of all the things he would have done differently, all the times he would have gone out to the mound and all the different pitches he would have called. They won, 7-4. Nate Robertson came out of it with a better ERA than Beckett, which was just, well, _wrong_.

Pudge showered much more slowly than he had to, avoiding the rest of the team as they gathered for the buses back to the hotel. When it had quieted down, only one or two stragglers left in the trainer's makeshift road office and the clubhouse attendants going around to collect dirty towels, he ducked out and made his way down to the home player parking lot. It was easy to get lost in Fenway, but the place was so small that it was impossible to get _too_ lost, and eventually he found his way by following the faint street noises up and out. He picked Beckett's huge white Range Rover out almost immediately and perched on the back bumper, squishing his butt back as best he could to stay up.

It was two hours after the game had ended, the night sky dead with clouds and bruise-colored urban light pollution obscuring the stars, but he could still hear the background rumble of Red Sox fans beyond the lot fences, milling around, shouting at each other, waiting for friends or on their way to a bar. There were a couple of bored cops all the way across the lot at a part of the fence that must have been the gate, waiting to shoo fans out of the way if someone needed to leave.

Most of the other Sox had already gone, but Beckett's was not the only car in the lot. Pudge kicked at the air, watching his sneakers flash in and out of the yellow light illuminating Beckett's parking spot. Mike Lowell came out, keys jangling as he twirled them idly around one finger. He stopped dead when he saw Pudge. Pudge risked taking one hand off of the bumper to wave at him.

"Hi." Lowell took a few steps towards him before stopping, realization breaking plainly across his face as he recognized the car. "Oh. He. He's not in a good mood."

Pudge nodded, shrugged. Lowell glanced over his shoulder at the ballpark, then back at Pudge. "How've you… you've been OK?"

"Sure. You like Boston?"

"It's, you know, everything's a little crazier here. It's good." Lowell's eyes drifted back towards the brick exterior Fenway wall. Pudge grinned.

"It's OK. You don' have to stay, I know how he is goin' to be."

"I don't think you really do," Lowell said. "Not anymore."

"Trust me, it's fine."

Lowell stared hard at him, then shrugged. "On your head. He shouldn't be too much longer." He turned and started walking towards his car, tossing a casual _see you tomorrow_ back over his shoulder. The cops down at the other end of the lot roused themselves, getting ready to haul the gate open.

It grew quieter once Lowell had left and the gate had been closed behind him. Maybe the crowd was finally starting to thin out a little. Pudge tilted his head back and watched the faint undulations of the yellowed cloudcover. He found himself wishing for a clear night, stars, a moon, something he could focus on.

He heard the scrape of the door opening, the gentle pad of crosstrainers on asphalt moving in his direction. "What the fuck are you doin' here?" Beckett asked, sounding aggrieved. Pudge brought his head down. Beckett looked as pissed off as he sounded.

" _Hola_. Nice to see you too."

Beckett hooked both his thumbs into the back pockets of his jeans, a move that made his shoulders look bigger, more dangerous. "What, you come out to gloat or some shit?"

"You think I would do that? Josh. What, I cannot come say hi?"

"Been a while since you bothered, huh? Excuse me for bein' surprised."

Pudge stared. Beckett rolled his shoulders back in something that might have been a stretch and might have been a shrug, looking at the top of the car, just over Pudge's head.

"If you want to talk," Pudge said, very carefully, "you can call me as easy as I call you."

Beckett still refused to look at him. "You left."

"I… yes. Well. Yes, my contract was up."

"You _left_ ," Beckett repeated. "You just up and left and didn't say shit, you didn't try'n talk, you didn't try to do anythin', you just up and _left_ , you-- you _abandoned_ everyone on that team."

"I did not _abandon_ anybody," Pudge said, shocked. "I did not… I sign wit' another team, that is _baseball_."

"You _left_." Beckett's eyes were boring straight into him now, almost pure black in the poor parking lot light.

Pudge shifted uncomfortably on the bumper. "Can we… can we not do this out here?" Beckett snorted shortly, jerking his hands roughly out of his pockets. He strode around to the driver's side of the car and pulled the door open. Pudge hesitated, then eased off the bumper and went around to the passenger's side, where he was only slightly mortified to discover that he had to hop up to get into the seat. Stupid Ranger Rover.

He expected Beckett to pull out, drive off to the local apartment he must have, maybe head for the visiting team hotel if he felt like he needed neutral turf or whatever, but Beckett did not even turn the car on. He just sat there, hands on the steering wheel, staring grimly out the windshield at the brick wall. Pudge carefully pulled his door shut.

"You left. Didn't even try to keep it goin'."

"There wasn't. I did not know there was anything to keep going."

"I got that by now, thanks," Beckett said, an unfamiliar bite of bitterness in his voice.

"I did not _abandon_ you." It was weirdly important for Beckett to understand this. "You were jus' a kid, you were under a contract. You have a whole team there and I know they keep Redmond to catch you, he is a good man, a good catcher, it is not like I abandon anybody--"

"You weren't there. You don't get to say how it was."

"Jesus, Josh. Then tell me how it was."

Beckett turned the steering wheel left, then right. Pudge could dimly hear the tires crunching over the pavement as they moved. "It was, we. We had a thing. We _were_ a thing." He glanced sidelong at Pudge, then quickly back to the windshield. "And we… we won it all. And then you left, and didn't even _call_ , like some kinda _cowardly fuckin' fuckface_. And I thought…" He thumped the wheel with the heel of his right hand. "It was like, we won the Series and I couldn't get higher'n that, but then it was a month later and you were gone, and Lee was gone, and everybody got to talkin' 'bout firesales and how the Marlins love that, and it was like, I had that high, then I was havin' a reaction to it. Like a comedown. And everything was _shit_ and I didn't hear shit from you, and I thought every bad thing in the world and sat around. Listenin' to Johnny Cash and shit."

"I'm sorry. I'm… it was jus'… it was a baseball thing, you know? I thought, I leave, I am not on the team, you don' need me to get in your way, you will go on and there is nothing to, to miss. It was not… I didn't know--"

"You're lyin'," Beckett growled. "You can't say it wasn't… you didn't…"

"I. Oh, Josh. I am married."

"Like that means a damn fucking thing, you--"

"--we have three kids--"

"I let you… I let you _fuck me_. I mean, what the _fuck_ , man?"

 _Dios_ , he had screwed this up badly. Stupid, stupid, Beckett had been so damn young, and he had known that everything had been a first for Beckett, he should have realized. "I let _you_ fuck _me_ also, remember. It was not like-- Josh, I am sorry. If it was… that way, for you, you could have called-- "

"I _did_ call." Pudge twisted in his seat to look Beckett full in the face. He would have remembered that, he was absolutely certain. "I started to, anyways," Beckett temporized. "I picked up and started dialin' a hundred times. And every time I stopped, 'cause I thought if you _really_ wanted to hear from me, you'da called yourself."

He remembered what Ryan had meant to him; of course he did, it was impossible to forget, no matter how hard he had tried. If Beckett had been assigning to Beckett-and-Pudge even a _fraction_ of the importance that Pudge in his youth had put on Pudge-and-Ryan… oh, hell.

"I thought you would jus' go to someone else, if you wanted. Another ballplayer even, it is what we do."

"Is it, now?" Beckett turned to look at him and Pudge found himself wishing that he had not twisted around so much, because now he could not look away without it being a huge, obvious motion. "Is that what you do."

"We all move around, is a rare player who stay wit' one team for all his career. A contract run out, there is a trade, somebody is sent down. So yes, that is what you do, it is what you have to do--"

"Oh sure, and every time you got perfect fuckin' control of how you end up… how you end up fuckin' _feelin'_ 'bout a person, is that right? Is that what _you_ do? What other ballplayers've you fucked, huh?"

"It is not like that… that is not what this is, it's not what this is about, I--" Beckett was starting to look truly thunderous. "I, fine-- fine! _Dios_ , if you really want to know. I ever tell you about Ugie?"

"Ugie-- as in, _Urbina_? What the _fuck_? Do you mean _in Florida_? While we were…"

"No! I mean, yes, in Florida, yes, but only one time and it was before, before me and you. And it is not like I was going to do wit' him what I do wit' you, it was jus', OK, no big deal, very nice, simple, I make no attachment, and that was…" _fine_ , he wanted to say, but ha ha, not so much.

"Jesus Christ," Beckett said. He sounded sick. "Get the fuck outta my car."

"Josh, you asked. Whatever you think right now, it was not--" He reached across the center console to put a hand on Beckett's arm. Beckett jerked away, almost crashing into the driver's side door.

"Get the _fuck_ out!"

All of his catching instincts were screaming at him to stay: Beckett was freaking out, he wasn't well, he was a pitcher and he needed to not be left alone, he needed to be taken care of and watched over. But Pudge was not Beckett's catcher anymore.

He clambered down from the car on shaky legs, trying to not let it show in case the lot cops were watching. He could hear the engine roar up and settle down to a purr as Beckett turned the car on, the protest of the tires as Beckett reversed out of his parking space a little too fast, slammed the car into drive before it had fully stopped going backwards.

He kept his head down and walked towards Fenway. He was going to have to find a stadium attendant, a security guard, some random late-shift Red Sox employee. Someone who knew the local companies and could call him a cab. They would be looking for him, back at the hotel.

**

Verlander was tall, and a little awkward, just like Beckett had been back in '03. He had thick dark hair like Beckett, but Beckett had never been able to control his and mostly didn't try, while Verlander had some elaborate, involved scheme in place to ruthlessly gel his hair into submission when he wasn't pitching.

He had a wicked, heavy popping fastball, but that was all he had in common with Ryan. He had absolutely nothing in common with Maribel, which was, well, _gracias a Dios_.

He was just another one of the kids on the team, pitching so incredibly that it had to be well above his means, just waiting for his fall back to earth. That was all Pudge ever intended him to be, and he could tell himself that it probably would have stayed that way if not for the night he got dragged out to a club with Verlander and his little rookie friends in Chicago.

At that point in his life he was more a bar guy than a club guy, but the rookies were still green enough to get excited by extremely loud music and strobing light, dance floors so crowded that you could barely move on your own. Going out with the kids was not exactly a habit, but every so often they could coax him into tagging along, and Chicago was a good city for it.

It was not a club that played his kind of music. Certainly nothing he knew well enough to dance to, so he was leaning on the bar, taking up valuable real estate and attracting glares from club kids who had no idea who he was, kids who probably had never seen a baseball game the whole way through. There was a hint of pain under his kneecaps, post-game soreness that should have dissipated by now but hadn't, and maybe that was keeping him off the dance floor too. If any of the rookies had asked, he would have said it was the music.

The crowd immediately in front of him rippled with some disturbance, then parted just enough to admit Verlander, who shimmied between club kids, palming every ass that came within reach. It was possible that with all the skin-tight jeans around, he couldn't even tell male from female. Pudge rolled his eyes at him, real wide and obvious so that Verlander would be sure to see even in the crappy light.

"Awesome, you're holding a spot, so smart, thanks dude," Verlander said, breathlessly crashing down next to him and sticking his long arm out over the bar to get the attention of the bartender. Pudge rolled his eyes again, but just for himself this time.

"Where's your little buddies?"

"What? You mean, Zoom'n Grandy? I dunno, somewhere, dancing. There was this girl, and Zoom was grindin' on her from the back, and Grandy was grindin' on her from the front, and I was just like, wow, I need another drink." The bartender came over and Verlander shouted something at him, leaning way over, his whole torso sprawled across the bar. Pudge shifted his beer to his other hand and grabbed the back of Verlander's belt, visions of Verlander tumbling, heels up, in front of the whole club.

A girl-- woman, Pudge revised in his mind, looking her over more carefully-- in an eye-popping zebra print dress bellied up to the bar next to Verlander. He turned to look at her, raking his eyes up and down her body so obviously that even Pudge, on his opposite side, could feel it. That was all right, normally; but even as Verlander was straightening up and angling his shoulders towards ZebraPrint, a huge guy, neck like a football player, was coming up behind her, resting a possessive hand on her hip and giving Verlander a clear _fuck off_ glare.

Verlander tilted his head towards the woman, a slow sloppy grin on his face. "Hey baby."

The guy with the hand on her hip stepped closer, eyes going tiny and threatening. Verlander licked his lips, all his attention locked on the way the busy pattern curved over the front of ZebraPrint's dress.

Pudge tugged hard on the side of Verlander's belt. "C'mon kid." Verlander looked at him crookedly, one eyebrow up. The big guy moved swiftly to insert his considerable bulk between Verlander and ZebraPrint. "Let's go."

"Uh, why?"

"Because I say so." Because he was not going to stand there and watch Verlander get his ass kicked for being drunk and horny and oblivious; for being, in essence, every young baseball player in the league.

"Say it again," Verlander demanded. Pudge stared at him. Verlander licked his lips, fingers squeaking around his beer bottle. "Say that. What you just said. Say it again."

He was not looking at ZebraPrint any longer, and that was a good thing, that was the direction Pudge wanted him going, so, OK, whatever. Fine. "We go, because I fuckin' say so."

"Yeeeeeaaaaaaah," Verlander said, all drawn out on the same breath. He curled his arm, drawing his beer up against his stomach. "Let's. OK. Let's go."

"What the fuck is wit' you?" Pudge muttered, but he tucked a finger into the nearest of Verlander's belt loops and started the long slow trek to the door anyways. Verlander _had_ agreed to go, even if he was being a weirdo about it, and it wouldn't do to lose the kid in the crowd at the last moment.

Outside the club was almost as crowded as inside, the line to get in stretching far down the street to the left. He tugged Verlander to the right, where there was a darkened shop, closed up for the night. Its huge glass windowed facade doubled Chicago, dizzying, except for the spot where it reflected Verlander's black silhouette as Pudge swung him around in front of it.

"Tell me, tell me again."

"Seriously, what is wit' you?" He tapped Verlander's shoulder with the heel of his bottle. They probably were not supposed to have open beer bottles out on the street, but he could not bring himself to care. The cops would know who they were anyways, this was an AL Central city; it wasn't like anyone was going to arrest them.

Verlander leaned back, putting his weight on the window. "Nothing. Just. Make me do something."

"What? I don't… what? I do not want you to _do_ anything, I want you to jus' tell me what the _fuck_ is goin' on wit' you!"

"Yeah. That's." Verlander's eyes slid closed. He tipped his head up until the back of his skull tapped the glass. His beer bottle dangled from his hand, fingers loose around the neck. He was clearly drunk as hell, but there was not really any way for Pudge to plausibly deny what was going on any longer.

"Are you gettin' off on this? On when I tell you to do shit?" he demanded, unaccountably mad. Verlander shivered. Pudge moved closer; just to keep his voice down, just so that the long snaking line of hopeful club-goers wouldn't hear. "What the _fuck_ , kid?"

There was no immediate response. He grabbed the front of Verlander's shirt. Verlander's eyes flew open, and his pupils were so wide, so black, so glossy that they reflected the myriad pinpoint lights of Chicago at night just as well as the window behind him.

"What. The fuck," Pudge repeated. Verlander flattened both hands on the window behind him. His bottle, forgotten, dropped to the ground and shattered, a loud noise mostly swallowed up in the music bleeding from the club and the traffic whizzing by not five feet away from Pudge's back. When Pudge stepped in closer, drawn by the upward cant of Verlander's goatee to the sky, wet glass crunched under the soles of his shoes.

"You, you c-can tell me t'do anything," Verlander rasped, rough voice barely above a whisper, aimed at the skyscrapers.

Pudge drew in a careful breath. Anything. _Dios_ , he wanted to tear Verlander's pants open right here on the street, jack him off against that expanse of glass. He wanted to punch through the window, drag Verlander into the store through jagged shards, fuck him on the dirty shop floor. He wanted to push Verlander to his knees, look down on the kid for once.

He raised his own bottle and tilted it, sending an amber spout of beer down the front of Verlander's shirt. Verlander gasped, sucking in his stomach to get away from the wet, but otherwise stayed put.

"Oops. Look at that. I think you need to take a shower," Pudge said. "Should get you back to the hotel."

"I'm. Pretty drunk. I might fall. I could… get hurt."

So fucking cheesy. He gathered the front of Verlander's shirt up into a fist, pulling it out of his pants, squeezing to make the beer run out-- and what a dork Verlander was, going out to a nightclub with his shirt tucked in like he was going to church. "Maybe I can be persuade to help out."

"Oh god." Verlander shuddered so hard that the glass at his back squealed. His fingers stuttered across it, leaving dull little streaks. "Pudge, _please_ \--"

"Shut up," he growled, tugging sharply on Verlander's shirt until he came forward, away from the window, stumbling a little, hand coming up to steady himself on Pudge's shoulder. He absolutely could not listen to Verlander beg out here in the street. Not when he was game-tired and halfway to drunk and Verlander was all long lean lines, dripping with beer (admittedly Pudge's own fault, that) and, despite Pudge's many months of determined denial, incredibly, stupidly hot.

"I am going to fuck you t'rough the _floor_ when we get back," he added, having just decided on that as appropriate revenge for Verlander doing this to him in public. He raised an arm for a cab. Verlander made a tiny whimpering sound and clutched his shoulder harder. He had a strong enough grip to make it painful and all Pudge could think about was how he was going to pay Verlander back for that, make him hurt in precisely the way that Verlander wanted.

**

After the next game, on the bus ride back to the hotel, Verlander flopped down next to Pudge without hesitation, limbs immediately gone loose like a sock monkey. Zumaya, standing by a pair of seats several rows in front of them, looked shocked and betrayed. Rogers shot Pudge a Significant Glare before sitting down next to Zumaya and saying something funny about Ozzie Guillen. It was very obviously just something to draw Zumaya's mind away from wherever it had been going, but Zumaya was a rookie and stuff like that still worked on him.

"What's the plan for tonight?" Verlander asked.

Pudge frowned. "No plan wit' you. Kenny wants to go out, I am going wit' him."

"Oh." Verlander glanced at him, moving just his eyes. "Well, if you already got plans."

He actually did not have plans with Rogers, but he had not missed the Glare. Rogers would have things to say, things he would not want to say with the rest of the team around; that was, in essence, what the Glare meant.

Rogers didn't even let him get into the hotel, pulling him right from the bus steps to a cab idling at the curb. He gave the driver the name of a bar and sat back, watching with some satisfaction as the travel secretary realized two equipment bags were still on the bus and realized at the same time that the owners of said bags were pulling away into traffic.

"So, the star rookie. Tell me you didn't."

Pudge shrugged, looking away. No point in pretending he did not know what Rogers was talking about. "You want me to lie?"

Rogers sighed and shook his head. "Pudge."

"Don' even start--"

"It's such a bad idea, what you're doin', I don't think I even can."

They rode the rest of the way in silence. Rogers disappeared from Pudge's side as soon as they got in the door of the bar, returning almost immediately with two girls, nearly too pretty to be real groupies. Rogers' was blonde with big, bouncy tits, and claimed her name was Ashley; the girl he had brought over for Pudge had dark brown hair and an ass like something out of a magazine. She said her name was Maria and that she was a lawyer, although she could have said she was a garbage collector for all Pudge cared once he laid eyes on her skirt. Rogers knew his tastes far too well.

Some number of drinks later they all crowded into the back of a taxi, messily making out, bumping elbows and accidentally grabbing handfuls of the wrong people, all four of them laughing. When they made it up to the floor where most of the Tigers were staying, somehow it made sense for all of them to bundle into Pudge's room, Rogers pinning Ashley to the wall next to the door, big hand roaming up her thigh while Pudge fumbled one-handedly with the keycard, his other hand too full of Maria to be any help.

He was on top of her, on the bed, before the door even had time to swing shut. Her mouth was sticky under his, waxy lipstick and something sweet from the mixed drinks she'd been putting away. He slid a hand up the inside of her leg until he could curl his fingers around some thin strand of lace there, whatever tiny unseen bit of lingerie she had on under her skirt.

From there it was easy, although the sounds he could hear from the floor-- breathy, high-pitched gasps, Rogers' lower grunts-- gave a slightly new dimension to the same old baseball groupie dance. It was not the first time he had done this with teammates around, and it certainly was nothing unusual, not for pros (easy way to tell a kid had just been called up-- tell him a story like this one, see if he acted shocked), but it _was_ the first time in their long, long history that he'd fucked a girl with Rogers right there alongside. For all the things he already knew about Rogers, this-- the specific intakes of breath, the way Rogers groaned several octaves lower than his usual speaking voice-- was something brand new.

But Maria was gorgeous, and willing, and _very_ able, and when Pudge bent to growl in her ear, "I wanna do you from behind, let me jus'--", she raked her nails down his back and said, "Yes, yes, baby, please," and only got noisier from there.

It was quiet after he came; Rogers and his girl must have finished before and he'd missed it. He lay back, feeling pleased with himself: nine innings caught, no errors, two White Sox gunned down trying to steal bases, beautiful woman soundly fucked; all in a good night's work. Maria stretched her whole body, back bowing gymnastically, then dipped an arm over the side of the bed. "I know, I know," said Ashley's disembodied voice. "Mmm. Give me five."

Pudge cocked his head at her. Maria sat up and smiled back at him, skating a hand over the muscles of his chest, light over the worst of his catching bruises. "We'll wash up, and then we better get going. It gets harder to get cabs as it gets later."

"Sure," he said. "Whatever you want. Shouldn' have any trouble here though, they have a cab stand." He rested a hand on her thigh. The season had tanned his hands so dark, she almost seemed to glow under his fingers.

"All the same." She picked his hand up, kissed it carefully on the knuckles, and rose gracefully from the bed, weaving around some invisible obstacle that must have been Rogers and Ashley before padding into the bathroom. Presently there was the sound of running water. A low murmur started up from the floor; Rogers taking the opportunity to say something to Ashley. Pudge let his eyes fall closed.

He was startled by the sound of the hotel room door closing. He had not meant to fall asleep. He normally never would with girls he didn't know wandering around his hotel room; that was a bad habit to get into, a good way to get yourself robbed blind. But this time he hadn't been alone and had somehow let himself relax just that much more than usual, just enough to cross the slender line between post-sex doziness and true sleep.

He stared at the ceiling. Rogers was still down on the floor; Pudge could hear him breathing.

"How you holdin' up, _viejo_?"

"Ah, cram it," Rogers said, but he didn't sound mad.

"You wanna come up off that floor?"

"M'fine for now. Floor's good for my back."

"Ol' man." He could hear Rogers huff indignantly in response. He folded his hands behind his head and smiled up at the ceiling, clucking his tongue softly. It occurred to him that he was still naked, and for all he knew Rogers was too. Maybe Rogers had misinterpreted his invitation. But Rogers had known him for long enough, surely, to realize what Pudge had meant.

After a while he started to wonder what Verlander was up to, if he was at the hotel or still out, if he was with someone or not. Verlander would not have liked Maria _or_ Ashley; so far as Pudge could tell, his taste in women tended towards the small and delicate. "What're you thinkin' 'bout?" Rogers asked, still invisible on the floor.

"Nothin'. Nobody."

Rogers sighed. "I didn't set this up just so you could go right back to thinkin' 'bout him."

"Oh, _excuse me_ , I thought you set this up because you want to do it."

"Settle down. Like it was such a terrible fuckin' hardship. But you need to not… you need to just, not. And a little redirection of, whatever, energy, that ain't a bad thing."

"I feel so used," Pudge sighed, slapping a hand down over his heart. Rogers' head popped up over the edge of the bed at the sound. His hair was a mess of short gray and brown spikes, just like it was when he took his hat off at the end of a long hot game, something tired in the set of his eyes to go along with it. Rogers' eyes were grayish blue, but there was a big brown spot in the left one that had always been there, or at least it had been for as long as Pudge had known him. He wondered how many of the other guys ever noticed it. They were always wearing hats with brims that kept everyone's eyes in shadow.

Rogers folded his arms on the edge of the bed, rested his chin on the spot where they crossed. "They keep gettin' younger for you, don't they?"

"That is not what this is about."

"OK. So explain it to me. What's it about? 'Cause I can't see this goin' anywhere but bad places."

"It's not _about_ anything." He sighed, frustrated. "It is jus'… he wants to do it, he wants it a very lot."

"At least admit that you had somethin' to do with it, jeez."

"Of course." He looked away. Rogers had never seen Verlander lean eagerly forward over a scouting report, begging Pudge every silent way he could to tell him firmly to get back to studying. He wouldn't understand.

"I just don't think this is a good idea," Rogers said eventually. "I think it's a real fuckin' shitpile of an idea. And if I don't tell you, there's nobody on this team that will."

Pudge flinched a little. His good-day high had pretty much disappeared; a kind of frantic foreboding was settling over him. Suddenly the fact that he was on the bed and Rogers was on the floor was simply intolerable. "Get up here. I. Kenny."

Rogers sighed, but planted his palms on the bed and pushed himself upright, the bones in his back crackling softly. He came around to the side and sat. Pudge rolled over onto his stomach and put a hand on Rogers' bare back, which was warm and just a little roughed up with something that would probably blossom into carpet burn by gametime tomorrow.

"I'm not gonna do anyt'ing to fuck up the team," he said.

Rogers shook his head slowly. "It's not the team I'm worried about."

Pudge traced a K on his lower back, then a backwards K next to it. Rogers sighed again, this one dredged up from somewhere way down deep in his trunk. Pudge doodled a W with his fingernail in the soft indentation at the base of Rogers' spine. It was the only way he really knew how to promise that things would be all right.

**

Their third road trip to Minnesota came in early September. It was the first time Verlander's spot in the rotation had come up while they were in the dome, and Pudge was a little bit nervous, because young pitchers in the dome always made him a little bit nervous.

But Verlander struck out the first Twin he faced, spinning a fastball past Luis Castillo so effortlessly that Castillo did not even seem to realize he had swung and missed until the umpire's raised fist was up in his face. The second batter, Nick Punto, tried to bunt to third. Inge come up the line with footwork that Pudge knew was near-impossible, but looked effortless on him. He fielded the ball cleanly and flipped it to Casey at first, nothing to it. The third batter was Joe Mauer, the catcher, easily the best player on the team.

Pudge stood up. The Twins would probably be upset that he had called time so early in the game, but that was an acceptable risk.

"I'm fine," Verlander said, almost before Pudge had reached the mound. Pudge continued up the hard little slope like he hadn't heard, curled his ungloved hand around Verlander's side, resting his hand at the small of Verlander's back. "I'm fine," Verlander repeated, bringing his glove up to hide his mouth this time.

"This guy, he will foul some balls off. Don' get _impaciente_ , stick to the gameplan, jus' like we discuss before. He's not gonna go one-two-three, so don't get surprised when he is still up five, six, seven pitches in. OK?"

"OK," Verlander said into the glove. If Pudge let his hand slide three inches south he would be groping Verlander's ass, something he could easily get away with in the context of a game. Verlander watched him with big eyes over the fingers of his glove, just one perfect little moment where Pudge could have done it, and Verlander knew he could have, and maybe Verlander wanted him to, but what Pudge wanted, mostly, was just to make Verlander want him to.

He pulled his hand away and walked back to the plate.

It took them six pitches, but Mauer struck out swinging. Verlander punched his glove on the mound, because it would have been a dick move to pump his fist in the air, but it was still his first clean inning at the Metrodome, and that was worthy of celebration.

**

The most important thing in the world-- or, OK, not the entire world; his world, anyways-- was winning. It was _everything_. If they were winning, the guys would be happy and everyone would be feeling good. The coaches would be less annoying than usual and all their suggestions would seem helpful and wise instead of instrusive and bone-headed. If a guy came in the day of a game with a massive hangover it would be funny instead of irresponsible, and if a guy got fucked up on greenies and banged an ugly groupie to work off the energy, it would be a good story instead of pathetic. When they were winning, everyone's kids were happy, big shots in their classrooms, and all the wives were in better moods. The crowds at the ballpark were bigger and louder and more forgiving, as likely to laugh at a bad play as boo. Even the grounds crew seemed to get into it, and the outfield would be more neatly trimmed, the basepaths groomed to silky perfection.

They were winning: barreling towards the end of the regular season in first place, and maybe the Twins were riding up behind them fast, but the wild card was coming out of the Central this year, no question. It would be nice to win the division title, but it wasn't strictly necessary. The most important thing was making it through to the playoffs, where it was all short series and anything could happen. All they had to do to make _that_ happen was just avoid complete collapse.

He was almost batting .300. So was Polanco; so was Ordonez. Carlos Guillen was batting _over_ .300. Inge had the lowest batting average of all the regulars, but he was absolutely shining on defense and the pitchers all loved him. They had only one starting pitcher with less than thirteen wins and only one regular reliever with an ERA over 4.00. It was difficult to imagine a collapse so complete that it would take them out of the postseason.

As the season ticked down day by day, closer and closer to October, it became harder to remember that there were things in the world that were not baseball or Justin Verlander, even though he knew that there were, he really did. He went to the ballpark; he went over the lineup with the starting pitcher for that day, guys he knew like the back of his hand by now; he caught nine innings, stood at the plate four or five or six times, soothed frayed tempers and buffered Leyland's comments; he showered; he threw some food down his throat; he had insane amounts of sex with Verlander; he slept like the dead; he woke up with the sun and his industrial-volume alarm clock and did it all over again.

It should have been exhausting. He wasn't a kid anymore; it wasn't like his first couple of years in Texas, where he could spend half the night at a bar and half the night at a party and get up the next day and leg out a couple of doubles. But it didn't matter, because they were _winning_. He had the energy for anything.

**

"Vance said he thinks I've got a shot at Rookie of the Year."

"Mmmhm."

"Well, you think so?"

"Sure," Pudge said. "Why not? Top of my brain, I cannot think of another rookie who does what you do this year."

"I just. _Wow_. I mean, Rookie of the Year, can you even imagine?" Verlander sprawled on the side of Pudge's bed that he had claimed as his own, stretching his arms over his head. "You didn't win it your year, did you?"

Pudge rolled his eyes. "No, I did not. Chuck Knoblauch did."

"Oh my God. Really? Chuck Knoblauch? He was retired before I was even _drafted_. What the hell year was that?"

"Ninety-one." Pudge propped himself up on an elbow, pushing a hand over Verlander's stomach, shoving his shirt up to expose his furry belly.

"You were a rookie in 1991." Verlander awkwardly shoved his chin down to his chest to watch Pudge's hand. "I was… um, eight. Little League. I remember they wouldn't let me throw a curveball 'cause they said it'd wreck my arm if I tried."

He shoved Verlander's shirt up higher, all the way to his collarbones, then bent to lick the closest nipple. Verlander made a happy humming noise and let his head fall back. Pudge grinned. "That I would like to see. I bet you were a real bitch at Little League." He lowered his mouth to Verlander's chest again and sucked hard on his nipple, the hand on Verlander's belly dropping as Verlander drew his stomach in, pressed his chest higher.

"God," Verlander said, once Pudge had stopped sucking and started kissing down the center of his chest. "Yeah. The other parents hated me. I threw too hard. Sometimes there'd be a kid in the on deck circle crying 'cause he saw how hard I was throwing."

"I think I see the Royals do the same thing last time you pitch." He was laying a line of kisses down Verlander's stomach, detouring momentarily to nip at the small amount of soft flesh at his side. Verlander only had boxers on, no hiding the fact that he was fully hard already.

"Let's not. I don't wanna think about-- ah-- about the Royals right now."

"Mmm," Pudge agreed. He pulled the boxers off easily and nosed down to Verlander's balls, which were as fuzzy as the rest of him. Verlander had offered to shave with a sort of pathetically desperate sheepishness months ago, but Pudge had told him not to bother. Sharp stubble was no fun for anybody, and the truth was that he rather enjoyed Verlander's hairiness; it was impossible to forget how very _male_ Verlander was. Anyways, the entire team was used to how he looked naked in the clubhouse. If he'd suddenly started showing up with his nuts shaved clean, the teasing would have been brutal.

Verlander's cock was a pleasant weight against his palm. He loosely circled it with his fingers and brought them up to just under the head, thumb rubbing at the lip a little. "Ah, that's, yeah," Verlander groaned, trying to thrust up in his grip, but Pudge pinned him down with one arm across his hips. Despite all the weight training, Verlander was still skinny enough for Pudge to handle easily.

"Please?" Verlander tried. "Pudge, I. Pllleeeeeaaaaaase?" His voice curled up in a desperate whine.

Pudge gave him a slow, deliberate squeeze, then took pity on him and wrapped his lips around the head. He massaged it with his tongue, let the tips of his teeth just barely touch down. Verlander was leaking into his mouth; not a lot, but the taste was disproportionately huge, salty and a little bit bitter.

He worked Verlander like that-- lots of tongue and a hint of teeth-- until Verlander was nearly sobbing with the frustration of not being allowed to move. That was his cue to sit up, stretch his own legs out across the bed. He patted one of his thighs. "OK, come on."

"Jesus, thank you, _finally_." Verlander surged up and over, scrambling, undignified, to transfer his sprawl to Pudge's lap. He stuck his tongue out and dragged it all over Pudge's cock, more enthusiastic than effective. Verlander _loved_ sucking cock, especially if Pudge was willing to pull his hair a little and be bossy about it.

He pushed his hands into Verlander's hair, watching the thick black strands divide around his fingers. He ran them up Verlander's scalp like he was trying to mold his hair into a mohawk, curled them back down the sides, thumbs stroking behind Verlander's ears. Verlander moaned and humped the bed a little, rubbing his face all over Pudge's groin. Pudge grinned at nothing in particular and shifted his hands to the sides of Verlander's head so that he could lift it, tilt Verlander's face up until their eyes met.

 _Dios_ , he would never get over the thrill of doing this with someone who had a goatee.

"You better do a good job down there," he said. He squeezed Verlander's temples a little for emphasis. "Do it good or you get nothin' later."

Verlander's eyes drifted shut. He smiled and nodded against the light pressure of Pudge's hands. When Pudge slid his hands back up into his hair again, Verlander let out a happy sigh and bent to wetly kiss the tip of Pudge's cock.

"This is the best year of my life," he murmured. He tilted his head to let his tongue curl around the shaft.

Pudge pushed his fingers all the way through Verlander's hair a couple of times, front to back, back to front, then halfway up so that he could push down. Verlander's mouth was hot, so hot and wet around him; the goatee was scratching at him in unpredictable places, a spectacular sensory counterpoint.

"Glad to be here for it," he said. Verlander opened his mouth wider, relaxed his tongue, and took Pudge straight down his throat. He rolled his eyes upwards, dark lashes fluttering. He was obviously incapable of talking at that moment, but his eyes were speaking, loud and clear: _Oh, me too_.

**

Kauffman Stadium was a nice enough park, although it was difficult to tease out the reasons why he liked it so much: was it because the park itself was nice, or just because it housed a team against which they almost always did well? In any event, their last road game of the season was in Kansas City, and that was good. Heading home on a high note and all that.

The game was in the late afternoon so that they could travel overnight, but it was so cloudy that the stadium lights were on full anyways. It was barely above 60 degrees. The guys on the bench were all bundled up in sweatshirts, and the relievers had their big team jackets on, hunched up in a row out in the bullpen like puffed-up navy blue birds huddling on a wire.

"Cold gonna bother you?" he asked, standing on the pitcher's mound as Verlander popped the rosin bag against the back of his pitching hand a few times.

Verlander looked down at him in surprise, letting the bag drop to the back of the mound. Inge and Guillen both went after it, tussling briefly before Inge wrested it away and began superciliously powdering up his forearms. Guillen folded his arms and glared.

"Cold?" Verlander said. He glanced around, seeming to notice the long sleeves half the team was wearing for the first time. "Huh. No, I guess not."

"Great," Pudge said, flicking his glove out from the wrist, so that the tips of its leather fingers just swiped the slack of Verlander's jersey.

It was barely even a game. They scored nine runs in the second inning, and there was no way the Royals could recover from that. In the top of the fifth Pudge hit a double to deep right, deep enough to score Omar Infante from first base, just for the hell of it; just because he could.

Leyland stopped him on his way out of the dugout to take their defensive half of the inning. "Last one for the kid," he said, gesturing at Verlander, somehow, with his mustache. "No sense'n tiring him out with the playoffs comin' up."

"Sure, right," Pudge said automatically, his mouth running ahead before he realized what Leyland had really said. If they hung on to win this game, they would be assured of a spot in the postseason, regardless of whether or not they kept ahead of the Twins in these last few weeks.

The rest of the team was gathering themselves and their equipment up for the bottom of the inning. There was a noise like a tinny stampede of buffalo from the direction of the clubhouse. "They're bringin' in champagne and shit down there!" Inge shouted, clattering up the clubhouse stairs in his spikes, closely tailed by Shelton.

Monroe smacked each one of them on the back of the head as they ran past. "Shut up, dweebs, it's only the fifth!" Shelton ducked away scowling. Inge turned and ran backwards for a few feet, flipping Monroe two middle fingers. Monroe turned to Pudge, spread his hands in helpless appeal. "Dude. Do something."

But Pudge only laughed and shook his head. Normally he would be the last person to encourage cockiness in the fifth inning (or second to last, after Leyland), but they were winning this game, they were _going_ to win this game, and it would be the first time the Tigers had made the playoffs since 1987. He could practically taste the champagne already.

He snagged his mask by its straps and took the dugout steps two at a time, leaving Monroe grumbling behind. Kauffman Stadium opened up around him, green and blue, and on the mound Verlander was waiting.

**

The sound of the door buzzer in his apartment surprised him a little; he had not been expecting anyone today. If it was a pitcher freaking out about the upcoming playoffs he would have expected a phone call before a visit, and nobody in the front office would ever just show up at his door. The only people who really would were Verlander and Rogers. Verlander had been out with Granderson and Zumaya the night before and was probably using the day to sleep it off. Pudge had just seen Rogers last night.

"Hello?"

//It's me,// said a familiar voice, crackling with the static of the building's intercom system. //Let me up, we need to talk.//

//I… _Maribel_?//

//Yes. Iván, we need to--//

//Um, OK. I mean, of course, come on up.// He buzzed her in, his mind whirling with possibilities. What in the world could have induced her to come to Michigan? Did she want to have the family in town for a possible postseason run? But the school year had just started and she had never liked taking the kids out of classes unnecessarily. Was everything OK? What if something _wasn't_ OK, what if, God forbid, what if one of the kids…?

When he opened the door, though, she was standing alone in the hall, a small day bag hanging from a shoulder. She looked tired and a little red about the eyes, little lines on her forehead that he couldn't remember ever seeing before.

//It's just you? Where are the kids?// he asked, backing up to let her in.

Maribel slammed her bag down on the floor. Pudge backed up another step. //The kids! They are with a nanny, in Miami where they belong.//

//You left them alone with a nanny?//

//They are not infants anymore!// Maribel said, her voice rising. //They are not so young that they will die if I'm away for two days. And you! You have no place to talk, you who aren't ever home anyways!//

//Woah, woah! Now that's, that's not fair, Maribel, I--//

//Not fair! Not fair?! You're never around, and when you are you're barely even their father, it's all, oh, papa's home, let's eat candy and play video games! What kind of a way is that for children to know their father? Candy and video games, and staying up late, you are… you're like some nice older friend who comes over sometimes! Not a father! They see more of you on TV than they do in the house!//

Pudge recoiled, physically recoiled, reeling backwards until he stopped up against the wall in the apartment kitchen. What the hell was this? It was, OK, it was true, all of it, but it was also completely unfair. This, baseball, it was his job. It was what he did to keep them all safe and happy with a big house and a private waterway, a golf course and all the toys they could ever want, clothes and jewelry for Maribel, multi-car garages and a luxury yacht and people to take care of it for him.

But Maribel had not finished with him yet. //And I thought, well, it is bad for us, without him around, but it is bad for him too, he must miss us terribly!// _Yes, exactly_ , Pudge thought, vindicated. //And even when he told me… I thought, he's mad at Iván for some reason, he is just saying this, it can't be true, I know how he really feels. But now I see it was never like that at all!// Maribel started on a yell and finished on a moan, sinking down into a chair at the kitchen table and putting her face in her hands. Her shoulders started to shake.

//I don't… I don't know what you mean.// Pudge still felt blasted, unable to separate himself from the wall. He should go over and put his arms around Maribel, he knew that, but he just… he just couldn't. Not yet.

//Don't know what I mean. No, perfect innocent Iván, of course he doesn't know,// Maribel said, slightly muffled by her hands. Something in her tone made Pudge's blood run cold, pinprick goosebumps skittering up the skin of his arms and tightening his scalp.

//He told me,// Maribel said. //He called me and he told me what you, you d-did with him, and that… that Beckett boy, and now I ask around, I talk to the wives and girlfriends here and Zumaya's girlfriend says… I hear it's this Verlander boy now, and they're practically _children_ , Iván, these _boys_ , and you… and you…// A sob racked her body, obscuring the rest of her accusation.

Pudge stopped. He simply stopped, as if time itself had frozen. He blinked more slowly, he couldn't move his arms or his legs. It felt like the beats of his heart had slowed down to a sluggish crawl. _He_ had told Maribel; who was that? It had to have been Urbina, it could only have been Urbina-- but at the same time his mind was saying, _never as careful as he should have been, not around the team_. He was never universally popular, and there were always going to be guys who hated him for any stupid reason, including what he was doing off the field, and did it matter? Maybe it was Urbina calling from jail in Venezuela, but maybe it was Zaun, or Penny, maybe it was some bit player who had lurked in the shadows, some fifth outfielder or middle reliever who had been beneath Pudge's notice all along but had been watching, biding his time with gimlet eyes; did it really matter who had told her? Because Maribel had not said anything that was not true, and Pudge had frozen up in the time when he should have loudly scoffed and denied it all.

He swallowed, slow, throat clicking. He swallowed again. It was already too late, but he had to say something. //It doesn't… they never meant. The same thing, they weren't,// he managed, choking on his inability to deny it all, to say that Beckett had meant _nothing_ , that Verlander was _nothing_ , that Ryan had never meant anything at all. //Not like you.//

//Oh, oh, that's what I used to tell myself,// Maribel said. She was crying hard now, her cheeks blotched with red. //I used to say to myself, it's OK, when he, he, he sleeps with those girls, it's just what men do, it is just h-h-his body and not his heart. His heart, that is all mine. And it hurt a little but I could push it away, because of that, because you didn't mean it with them, those others, I thought you didn't.

But you think I don't know? You think I have been married to a baseball player this long, I don't know anything about it? You are-- Iván, you are a catcher, a _good_ catcher, you think you can tell me your pitchers mean the same as a g-groupie? You think you can tell me you don't care at all about your pitchers, and you expect me to, to believe it? To think for one stupid second that could be true?//

Pudge shook his head, silent. It was all he could do.

Maribel kept crying, the tears falling thick and fast between the fingers she held over her face. She was wearing jeans, and the tears were making dark spots on her thighs as they landed on the denim. //No. I know better, I know that you… that you… and I was such a fool! For so long I just thought… and the whole time you were, with them, and then you'd c-come home and do it with _me_ , and I didn't see because I didn't want to see and now… now. It w-wasn't supposed to end up l-like this.//

 _No,_ Pudge thought. _No, it wasn't_. Because they had done everything right. Married to the teenage sweetheart, sticking together through the minors and years in the majors, through good teams and bad. Three children, conceived at decent intervals, their faces all unambiguous amalgams of Pudge and Maribel, not the least doubt about where they had come from. Pudge had gone off to play ball and Maribel had stayed home to raise them up right, yes, by herself much of the time, but not all the time, and the unspoken assumption was that eventually Pudge would retire, and then he would hang out around the house and they would have nothing _but_ time together. As a family.

Maybe he would go to three or four charity events a year, and then there would be old-timers' games even less frequently, and maybe he would set up an academy or something within easy driving distance of the house, teach baseball to rich little kids, or maybe he would give inspirational speeches to hopeful young men coming from places where Spanish was spoken. He would be around to attend the high school graduations of each child, and then, _si Dios quiere_ , their college graduations. It was a good story. It was an expectation, a linked chain of expectations that he and Maribel had both shared.

But it had gone all wrong. Maribel had stuck to the script, done her part; it was Pudge who had fucked things up. It was not Beckett's fault. Verlander had had nothing to do with it. It was him-- just him.

//I can't do this anymore,// Maribel said. She gasped and sniffed, wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. //I can't… I just can't, Iván, it's been so many years and for all of them it was lies, lies, lies. I knew some of it, going in, I know what baseball players are, but this is too much. This is… I can't. Not anymore.//

//What… what are you…//

//I want a divorce. I'm getting a-- I'm divorcing you.// She stood, her mouth all twisted up, tear-tracks streaked down her cheeks. //And the children stay with me. God knows you couldn't take care of them anyways. I only came out here because… because…// She turned her back to him then. Her shoulders were shaking harder. //Maybe it's all been lies and you have used me in all the worst ways, but fifteen years. Fifteen years, and I, God help me but I was happy for some of them, and I could not just tell you over the, the phone…//

//Maribel. Maribel, I. No, you can't. Please don't--// He finally, _finally_ moved, pushing off of the wall and going to her, what he should have done in the first place, what should have been his very first move. It always should have been his first move.

She shuddered when his hands landed on her shoulders. //Don't. Don't, don't touch me,// but he was turning her around, taking her wet face in his hands, stupid rough catcher's hands that had probably never been worthy of her skin. //Don't, Iván, I have to. I will. Don't make this worse than you already have.// He kissed her closed eyes with trembling lips. And then his arms were around her and her arms were around him, and she was crying into his shoulder, which was fine, because he was crying into her hair.

Once he started, he found that he could not stop, the sobs coming in huge ugly gasps from way down deep in his diaphragm. He was crying so hard he could hardly breathe, blinded with tears, his voice gone, crying so hard that his head ached with it, his chest screamed with pain, his back was spiked through with muscle spasms like he got after long, long games. This was his wife, the mother of his children, hurting so badly, and he had done it. This was his _life_ , falling apart right here in his arms, with nobody in the whole wide world to blame but himself.

**

The road twisted before his eyes, the lines unreliable, seeming to march away of their own accord as he blinked through fear and horror and the rim of just-dried tears. Luckily it was late, and at this hour there were hardly any cars on the road this close to Detroit.

His tires made a grinding noise as he pulled up too close to the curb in front of Verlander's building, but he did not care. Tires, what were tires, he could buy a million of them in an eyeblink and his bank account wouldn't even notice. He staggered up the steps, somehow managed to press the button for Verlander's apartment. There was a long, long moment where nothing happened; he leaned the heel of his hand against the button, a dulled buzz sounding somewhere high above him. Finally the door made a faint snicking sound as the lock disengaged and he was able to blunder through, grope his way to the elevator.

Thankfully there was nobody in the lobby of Verlander's building. He must have looked like a wreck, must have looked drunk and beaten, like someone had dragged him behind a car and left him for dead. His whole face felt raw, his eyelids hot and swollen. His lip was numb where he had bitten it. The collar of his shirt was wet with shed tears, torn down the side where he'd fallen to the floor when Maribel had finally pushed him away and left. He could not even be sure that he had two socks on his feet.

He did not knock on Verlander's door, just sort of collapsed against the frame, but Verlander must have heard him anyways. He opened the door and peered out into the hall, blinking blearily in the light, his hair all sticking up on the left side of his head. His hairy legs emerged awkwardly from a ratty-looking pair of blue plaid boxers with the Old Dominion logo on one leg.

"This, we got to stop," Pudge croaked out.

Verlander turned a startled face towards him, eyes widening as they took in whatever details he was capable of processing at the moment. His mouth went slack with confusion. Even with the goatee he looked desperately young.

"Unh. What?"

Pudge fell into him, grabbing onto his hair with both hands to pull his head down, kissing him desperately. Verlander loosely wrapped his arms around Pudge's back, muscles sleep-soft and apparently on autopilot. He stumbled backwards into the apartment, not with any obvious designs, but because Pudge's weight and despairing lack of balance drove him that way.

Some minutes later he pulled back. His arms were a little firmer around Pudge now, which was good, because Pudge was dead on his feet, and probably would have fallen over again without Verlander's support.

"What happened? Are you… are you OK?" Verlander cringed as soon as he had said it, probably aware of how incredibly stupid it sounded under the circumstances.

Pudge sniffled against the front of Verlander's shirt. It was thin, warm from Verlander's skin; he could feel the finely developed pitching muscles of Verlander's chest through it. "No. No, not'ing is OK."

Careful fingers stroked down the back of his neck. "OK. That's… um, OK. You said… coming in? You said we… have to stop? Did I hear that right?"

"Yes. No. I don't know, I--"

"Look, hey, do you want a drink?" Verlander asked. "'Cause, you know, I'm only sort of awake here, but I'm getting the feeling I'm gonna want a drink. And you really look like you could use one."

He nodded. Verlander gingerly led him over to the couch, where he collapsed like he'd lost control of all his limbs at once. The springs squeaked under his weight, and Verlander's head jogged minutely at the sound before he ducked into the kitchen.

He was so, so, so, _so_ fucked. He was shattered, in ten thousand jagged-edged pieces that could never be put back together again. _And it hadn't even really sunk in yet_. When he finally _did_ get around to processing this-- when the fact that Maribel had left him became cold hard reality, instead of the foggy nightmare it was right now-- what would it do to him then? How could he possibly survive?

And the timing of it: just after the regular season had ended, right before the playoffs were set to begin. He should have been preparing himself for the upcoming games, which would be more important than any of the games they had played so far this season. He should have been making sure that he was in the absolute peak of physical and mental condition. There were a lot of young players on the Tigers, lots of kids who had never been in the playoffs; he was supposed to be the mentor, the Guy Who Had Been There Before. He was supposed to be able to show them how to deal with the pressure and the nagging fear of screwing it all up.

He didn't know how he was going to make it through the night. How in the world could he make it through _the playoffs_? How was he supposed to support an entire team when he could barely support the weak, shaky frame of his own self?

"Hey. _Hey_." Verlander pressed a cup into his hands. Pudge brought it to his mouth without thinking, sharp whiskey smell drawing him; then he glanced down. Verlander had poured the drink into a big red plastic Solo cup. The kind of thing the rookies used to play beer pong.

He couldn't help it. He burst out laughing.

"S'all I had," Verlander muttered, sitting down next to him and taking a defensive sip from his own cup. "I mean, I got some shot glasses, but. They're kinda, um, sitting in the sink from last weekend."

Pudge shook his head and leaned into Verlander, laughing helplessly. He was verging on hysteria, he was aware enough to know that; it would be too easy to give himself up to uncontrollable laughter. He could keep going until he hyperventilated, and then he could pass out into a welcome darkness. It was sorely tempting. Instead he turned his face into Verlander's shoulder and let the laughter wind down until it had subsided into a few sporadic giggles and hiccups. Maybe there were a few fresh tears too.

Verlander had slung an arm over his shoulders at some point and was absently stroking his side, his arm long enough for the task. He waited until Pudge was sniffling and jerking with the occasional hiccup before asking, "So, um. What's going on?"

He was suddenly far, far too tired to dance around it. "I. Fuck. My wife found out. Now it will be a, a divorce."

"Found out? About… you mean, about _me_?"

"You, me, everybody else."

The arm around his shoulders tightened momentarily. "Everybody else?"

God. Pudge closed his eyes, blindly gulped down a mouthful of whiskey. "You're not the first. You know that."

There was a soft sound above him. Verlander blowing out a breath, maybe. "Yeah. I mean, obviously. I just… um, anyone I would know?"

Pudge squeezed his eyes shut harder, forced his eyelids together until colors exploded red and green behind them. "Does it matter?"

Silence. His head was still on Verlander's shoulder and Verlander's arm was still around him. Everything ached. He was somehow afraid to open his eyes.

"You know," Verlander said, "I don't think it really does." He smoothed his hand up and down Pudge's side. "But if you were having, like, hot sweaty catcher orgies and wanted to tell me about 'em, that would be, you know, fine by me."

"Yeah." He shifted up to press his face into the side of Verlander's neck, where the pulse beat hot and regular against his cheek.

"I'm, um. Real sorry about your wife," Verlander added, awkward but sincere. He tilted his head so that it was resting on top of Pudge's. "If, if you think it would help, to stop… I don't wanna be more trouble or, like, cause you trouble with your family."

"I should," Pudge said. "But there is nothing that will help now. And I don' want…"

"OK. So we'll just--"

"You shouldn't. This is, I am goin' to be a mess, and you, you do not deserve to be dragged down wit' me."

"OK, no. I mean, yeah, no." Verlander tipped his head back, shotgunned the rest of his whiskey fast, crumpled up the cup and threw it with a neat abbreviated fastball motion to the other side of the room. He nudged Pudge's head with his nose, his recently freed hand coming up to cup the side of Pudge's face. "I like… this. I like you. You, um, showed me lots of good stuff this year. I mean, baseball stuff, and… not baseball stuff. I don't… it's not a matter of, like, deserving or not deserving."

"But it is. It is. And I don' deserve shit."

Verlander made a nervous little coughing noise, but when he spoke, his voice was weirdly firm. "You don't get to decide that," he said, and he did not sound anything like a rookie, just then. He sounded like the pitcher he was going to become.

**

His life stopped, but baseball didn't. All too soon the postseason was upon them, October baseball, the coldest and dreariest but most-coveted variety of the sport. He played on because he had to, because there was no alternative. Operating on the absolute dregs of his unconscious ability, relying on instincts accumulated over the course of his career, that was the best he could manage. It wasn't fair to the team. But going to Leyland, saying he was in no fit state to play-- that was never even an option.

It worked for the first series, anyways. He bluffed his way through two games in Yankee Stadium, calling pitches by rote, seeing-not-seeing the pinstriped players in front of him. They won the first two games, but he went 0-for-8 at the plate. Leyland took him aside before the third game, back home in Detroit.

"I don't know what your problem is, and I don't care," he growled. "Get your head back in this."

 _I can't_ , Pudge wanted to say. _I don't know if I ever can again_. But that was not what Leyland wanted to hear, so he just nodded and muttered something placatory and went to see if he could cadge a greenie off of Rogers. He wasn't going to be able to do it on his own, but maybe he could fake it. Better baseball through chemistry and all that.

They lost, but he went 2-for-3 with a double, a respectably solid outing. Leyland had nothing much to say to him after the game.

It was somehow easier after that. His body _did_ remember how to play on its own, and, knowing that, he could put more trust in it to do what it knew best. They won the fourth game, to knock the Yankees out of the playoffs. They won four straight against Oakland to secure the American League Championship.

They were going to the World Series.

**

The first game was in Detroit. Verlander was starting. Of course.

He couldn't do it. Bluffing could only take him so far, and the World Series itself was apparently the limit. He was in the World Series and his kids weren't there to watch him. He had gotten a fucking _phone call_ from Dereck, who had sounded sad and scared and confused, not really understanding why he wasn't allowed to fly out, just barely aware that Papa had done something bad to make Mama cry so much, and Pudge had never felt worse than he had in that moment.

He asked Dereck to put Amanda on the line too, but she wouldn't come. //She says she doesn't wanna talk to you,// Dereck admitted, low and guilty like it was somehow his fault. Pudge managed to make it through the rest of the phone call, but when Dereck hung up he went into the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror and thought very, very seriously about why he was even bothering to stay alive.

At the ballpark, Verlander paced tight circles in front of his locker, wringing his hands together, reciting the Cardinals lineup over and over. Pudge needed to settle him down. He needed to go put his hands on Verlander's shoulders, sit him down somewhere, tell him to breathe. He should assure Verlander that he knew what he was doing and he would be able to guide them both through it and everything would be just fine.

But he couldn't. He sat in front of his own locker, staring at the carpet between his cleats. Leyland walked by and hissed something angry, imperative, but there was absolutely nothing Leyland could say that would be worse than what he was already saying to himself.

Verlander was jumpy and wild on the mound. He gave up one run in the second, three in the third. In the sixth he threw a ball away that let Albert Pujols advance two bases. He looked shell-shocked when Leyland came out to pull him from the game.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Leyland just shook his head and shot Pudge a nasty glare. Verlander walked slowly back to the dugout, rubbing at one cheek, staring at nothing in particular: the very picture of a pitcher cut adrift.

Pudge looked away.

Rogers pitched the second game and managed to hold onto it by the skin of his teeth. He was more of a veteran than Pudge, though; he had been to the World Series before; he was not so dependent on a catcher.

They lost the third game. They lost the fourth game. The fifth game was in St. Louis. Verlander's spot in the rotation had come up again.

He threw two wild pitches in the first inning. Pudge thought of all the things a good veteran catcher should do. He knew how it was all done. But every encouraging word he tried to say came out wooden and insincere; every steadying touch came out limp. Every pitch he called was exactly the wrong pitch, and Verlander didn't-- wouldn't, couldn't-- override him.

They lost the game, and the Series. The Cardinals sprayed each other with champagne and beer and the St. Louis fans rose up in a joyous sea of red, pleased as punch to have it all won on their home turf. Verlander disappeared into the clubhouse with his hands shaking and his eyes hollow. Zumaya ducked in after him.

Pudge sat on the dugout bench and watched the celebration engulf the field. Every smile on a Cardinal's face was like a spike to some tender spot on his heart, but he was going to sit there and take each and every one of them. It couldn't hurt this much forever. Layer enough pain on there, and eventually he would have to go numb.

**

"So you're getting divorced." Boras said it like a salesman: _so you've decided to buy a new car!_ Pudge nodded dully, looking at the perfect, obsessively vacuumed beige carpet of Boras' office.

Boras pushed a printout across the desk at him. "Here's your lawyer. Best in the business. Tons of experience with separations involving your, ah, level of assets." He folded his hands neatly in front of him, a pen tangled up in his fingers. "Now, you were married how long?"

"Fifteen years."

"And you're breaking it off now why?"

Pudge swallowed hard, dug the fingers of his right hand into his thigh. He did not want to talk about it. He most especially did not want to talk about it with Boras. But Boras was his agent. "Cheating."

Boras made a little note on the legal pad next to him. "You or her?" Pudge shot him a single disgusted look. Boras nodded, unruffled. "Had to ask. You'd be surprised. Now. She given you any trouble over the preliminaries yet?"

"My daughter," Pudge said, knowing damn well it wasn't what Boras was asking, still unable to stop himself. "My oldest daughter, she will not talk to me."

Boras bent his head over the pad, raised just his eyes to look at Pudge. "How old."

"Eleven."

"They often side with the wives," Boras said, dropping his eyes back to the pad and shrugging. "These daughters, you know. _Women_." He scribbled a few more lines, black ink blooming in spikes and loops over the yellow page. "When do you plan to get remarried?"

"I. Excuse me?"

"Remarried. Married again." Boras stopped writing and looked up. His expression was flat, all business. "Maybe to the cheat-ee?"

"That is. That. No. It's not legal," Pudge said, looking at his hand curled on his leg, at the carpet, at his shoes, anywhere but at Boras. He could almost see Boras running through the possibilities in his mind, the reasons why Pudge could not legally marry someone. An already-married woman? Some little underage chick? He would get to the truth of it eventually.

In some ways it would be easier to just tell Boras everything. He spun things for a living; this was his area of expertise. Pudge could just lay it all out there, every last little sordid detail, the whole tangled disaster area that was his life, and let Boras deal with it. Let him apply logic and reason to it, rationalize and sanitize.

It would be easy to tell him about Urbina; there was no harm in that, not now that Urbina had been neutralized out of sight, and thus out of baseball's mind. But he could not tell Boras about Beckett, or Verlander-- it wasn't his to tell. And of course the mere thought of bringing up Ryan was nearly enough to send him screaming out of the office.

"You'll have to take up with someone else, then," Boras said, very carefully. "Before, when you were doing… whatever. You had the wife and the kids you could point back to. Instant cover story. Now, I don't say this to make you feel bad or anything. That's how it is for most guys in the league, one way or another. And you think you guys are crazy, you should see the NFL guys, or the European soccer guys. Whatever you've been up to, it hasn't made the papers, so already you're ahead here.

But you don't have that, the cushion. The excuse, the cover for… whatever. Not anymore. You need to get it back."

"I still have… I still, the kids…"

Boras shook his head gently. "Doesn't work like that. And hey. Hey. I'm not saying you have to fall madly in love here. I'm not gonna ask you to do something crazy-hard. I'm talking about an image thing, that's all. Just find some willing girl, make sure she's cute enough you don't mind fucking her if you have to, set her up in an apartment somewhere. Do the ceremony, give her a shopping allowance, you get the squeaky clean image back, she gets a free ride, nobody gets any controversy, you sign nice big fat contracts, the agent gets paid, everyone's happy."

"I don'. I don't think I can do that." Which was an understatement. The very thought of it was making his throat itch, acid rising up at the back.

"Look. You're not the first big leaguer I've represented who had something going on the side, not by far. You're not the first big leaguer I got through a divorce, OK. I know how it'll all go down. I'm talking _image_ , here, Pudge, I'm talking your _career_. Trust me on this."

He closed his eyes against the dizzy sick feeling in his stomach. He couldn't do this. It would be like a perversion of everything he and Maribel had been, everything they had promised to each other, everything they had lived through and loved through for all those years.

But-- he'd already ruined it. Perverted whatever his marriage had been supposed to stand for. Hadn't he.

"I can call around the local high-end escort services, see if there's anything that catches your eye," Boras was saying. "Just to get you started, no need to pick from that pool, but it's best to get the ball rolling on this as soon as possible. Takes a while to plan a wedding, you know."

"I know," Pudge managed, throat scraped raw on the inside like he'd been screaming, even though it had been the exact opposite, all the words he wanted and needed to say dying back behind his tongue long before they could taste air. Boras flashed him a quick grin, so slickly fast that it was gone almost before it had registered, and reached for his phone.

 **2009**

It was strange to be working on one-year contracts again. Strange to feel that annual uncertainty, a real throwback to his earliest years in the league. Boras kept telling him that it was to be expected for a thirty-seven year old player, especially a catcher. Normal. Every next year was the one where he could finally break down, from the perspective of a team (not from Boras' perspective, Boras believed in him totally, _of course_ ). He did not _feel_ like he was any closer to breaking down than he had been the past couple of years, but he had to try to see it the way a team would. It was not that they were showing him a lack of respect; it was just that they had a different way of looking at things.

Still, he'd held out for a while, hoping for at least one team to come through with a multi-year offer. He even would have taken two years with a buy-out option. But nothing came, and in the end he just had to pick the least objectionable of the singleshots available to him, which had turned out to be the Astros.

He was honestly trying to make the best of it. If nothing else, he was bemusedly enjoying the experience of Texas baseball in the wrong league. They had a _dome_ , of all things; it could be _air-conditioned_ when the weather called for it. Compared to Arlington, which had been a long, drawn-out exercise in heat and sun suffering, it was surreally luxurious.

His usual number seven had been retired the previous season in Houston. Craig Biggio had worn it for twenty years with the Astros; they were not about to un-retire it for Pudge. He tried wearing 12 for a while, but it felt weird on his back, somehow, the fabric of the numbers pulling oddly at his jersey-- maybe just in his mind, but it _felt_ real. He switched over to 77, which was not perfect either, but was at least an improvement.

In June, interleague play brought them up against the Rangers. They drove right into classic Arlington: mid-90s at night, that familiar old searing dry heat that left the Astros grumbling. Pudge was so keyed up he barely felt it. Nolan Ryan had been hired as the president of the Rangers in '08. He had already earned a reputation for being a hands-on kind of president, much more involved in team management than most, and he would certainly be in the ballpark somewhere, watching.

The second game of the series, June 17, was his 2,227th game caught. That put him ahead of Carlton Fisk-- the original Pudge-- a Hall of Famer who had retired when Ryan did. It was Pudge's nineteenth season and he was still only 37 years old, and he had caught more games than any other single player in the entire 140 year record of Major League Baseball. He had seen the numbers countless times in the newspapers and magazines in the week leading up to this day, and they still did not quite feel real to him. He had been there for each and every one of those games, obviously, but that many, _Dios_ , surely that had to be a mistake, surely that couldn't be right.

That wasn't a career, that was _history_.

His first time up to bat, he tapped his cleats in tidy compact motion, the familiarity of batting in Arlington embracing him like an old friend as he stared in at the pitcher. He hefted his bat, waited for the pitch, but the pitch didn't come. He did not understand the delay until the Rangers' catcher, some impossibly young kid with an impossibly long name, stood up behind the plate and touched him hesitantly on the shoulder. Pudge turned to stare at him.

"They're standing for you. Um, sir." The kid fumbled to take off his mask and helmet, then tipped both at Pudge, a little nervous grin on his face.

Pudge spun on his heel, bat dropping down to his side. Every single person in the stands was on his or her feet. They were clapping, chanting something that gradually resolved itself into his name, _Pudge_ on a rising swell of collaborative noise. The people in the luxury boxes were standing too, tiny and remote from home plate. Somewhere up there, he knew, was Ryan.

There was really only one thing to do. He grasped the brim of his batting helmet and in one smooth motion raised it from his head, waving it to the crowd behind home. He turned slowly, saluting the fans behind third, the fans in the outfield bleachers, the crowd behind first base. There was a video running on the scoreboard, some compilation of baseball scenes from his past, but he kept his eyes on the fans. The noise had swollen to something incredible; it must have been shaking the stadium down to its concrete foundational bones.

When he had made a full revolution he put his helmet back on, tamping it down with a few taps to the top, and swung his bat up to his shoulder again. The kid catcher fumbled to put his own helmet and mask back on too.

"Congrats," he said, as he settled back behind the plate. "This is, wow. S'really something."

Pudge grinned down at him. The kid nearly swooned out of his crouch. "Sure, guess it is."

The game itself was unremarkable. They ended up losing by one run in extra innings. Maybe he should have taken himself out of the game in the later frames, let his backup catch the rest of it, but he hated to voluntarily sit even under normal circumstances, and he was not about to do so in this game. It was kind of fitting, anyways, to catch an extra number of innings on the day he caught a historic number of games.

In the clubhouse afterwards the Astros presented him with an insanely expensive bottle of champagne, something they'd all pitched in to buy. They all had cheaper bottles of champagne for themselves, and they all wanted him to sign these, taking cell phone photos with their arms slung casual around his shoulders. They shook his hand one by one, congratulated him with bright sincere voices, all these National Leaguers, these kids who hadn't even played a full season with him, and he was so overwhelmingly touched that he had to excuse himself and go sit in the bathroom for a while, alone, just breathing.

So it was not the American League. Maybe it wasn't ideal. Maybe in the minds of a bunch of moron owners out there, he was too old to go on. But he still had a clubhouse that welcomed him, a team to lead, baseball to play.

**

In August, Ed Wade, who had always been polite to him if nothing else, called. "It's about the Rangers," he said.

"Um," Pudge said, certain that he had misheard. Wade was the general manager of the Astros. He didn't have anything to do with the Rangers.

"They're asking for you in a trade. Well, Mr. Ryan is. Mr. Ryan was very insistent," Wade said, and Pudge gaped at his apartment wall in confusion for several seconds until he remembered that Ryan, as president of the Texas Rangers, apparently had the ability to pull off a trade if he wanted.

"I… OK…"

"I'm s'pposed to give you a message," Wade added, sounding amused. He recited an address, date, and time, obviously reading off of something. "He wants t'meet you there before the trade's finalized. I'll tell you straight, this is not how we usually do business, but I'm not one to go up against Mr. Ryan."

"Um. No, I… of course. Thanks." He hung up, stunned. Ryan wanted him back on the Rangers. _Ryan_ wanted _him_ on the Rangers?

Of course he would show up to this meeting, whatever it was. He couldn't very well turn down an invitation from someone that high up in any front office, but even if Ryan had not been a Major League Baseball team president, he would go. It was Ryan.

**

He did not recognize Ryan when he walked into the bar, which was embarrassing. On some stupid level he supposed he had expected Ryan to look exactly the same as always, and so he stood in the doorway, looking from side to side, waiting for his eyes to fall on a familiar face. Stupid, stupid. He had a computer, he could have looked up more recent photos, but he hadn't thought to do that, and now he was going to just stand here until one of the probable real-life cowboys at the bar decided he was looking at him the wrong way and got up to do something about it.

"Pudge. Hey, Pudge."

He spun around, relief flooding him, turning into shock when he saw who had called his name. Ryan was-- well, he had a belly, he'd _ballooned_ , all the weight he had fended off over the course of his career apparently slamming into him hard now in his semi-retirement. His forehead was high and domed, weak bar light glinting off of it, the short hair clinging tenaciously to the back and sides of his head bleached out to a gray so pale that it was almost white. There were bags under his eyes; his ears, weirdly, seemed longer. He had _jowls_.

"You look good," Ryan said. "Little different, but almost just the same." Pudge shook his head and snorted. "No, you do," Ryan insisted. "It's actually almost kinda creepy, but y'look more like you did back in the old days."

"Lost some weight. I guess that helped." He did not mention Ryan's appearance. It was almost shocking how old Ryan looked, although it should not have been; Ryan had already been an old man in baseball terms when Pudge had last seen him in person. Now he was an old man by anyone's standards.

They made excruciatingly small small-talk, both looking at the table in front of them, taking in its worn wood surface, the dark rings of past drinks set down without a coaster, the initials gouged into the edges, black with unmovable grime. A standard bar table in a standard Texas bar, too run-down to be touristy, although some of the limp, cheesy wall decorations indicated that it had hopes in that direction. Pudge had never set foot inside it before; Ryan knew the owner, or something.

"I heard 'bout Beckett, y'know," Ryan said, deliberately casual, like he was bringing up the score of yesterday's game instead of bypassing any semblance of polite circumvention to go straight into a heavily land-mined warzone. "You think you're bein' careful, but that stuff gets 'round, in baseball. Always. The league ain't nothin' but a buncha gossips stacked in together like a can'o sardines when you get on down to it. And that's why… I wanted to tell you. I have to tell you that that's why I couldn't never…"

Pudge pressed his lips together and looked out towards the bar. The bartender was busy doing something complicated with lots of different bottles, flipping and twirling, arcs of translucent liquid spinning artfully from their spouts into a tall thin glass set before her. The moment where he could have brought up Urbina, and Verlander, came and went in silence. It didn't really matter anyways.

Ryan followed the line of Pudge's gaze to the bartender and watched her for a moment too. "I almost. I almost hoped you'd come out for the induction ceremony." A bit of a non sequitur, but Pudge cottoned on easily enough. Ryan's Hall of Fame induction.

"Ten years ago," Pudge said. Ryan jogged his head to the side, dismissing the time easily. Pudge thought back, dredging up the year. "That season. Man, I was busy that season. All Star game, Gold Glove, I hit over .300. That was the year I win the MVP," he added, pleased even now at the memory, although the warm, proud feeling faded slightly as he gazed across the table at Ryan's face. He could not really read Ryan's expressions properly anymore through the obscuring haze of wrinkles and fat. "I guess you'll hafta come to the ceremony when they induct me."

Ryan laughed. "You better hurry up'n retire, then. You don't come up for votin' 'til five years after you call it quits, and who knows if I'll be around that long."

"Ah, you are not _that_ old."

"In m'sixties, though, ain't I? All it takes is one little heart attack and _bam_! That's all she wrote."

"You jus', what, sit around thinkin' about that shit?"

"Mmm. I never smoked, I got that goin' for me, and I never did none of them harder drugs, but I sure drank plenty, and then there were the greenies, and I didn't always eat too healthy. Ain't like I got a stat sheet tellin' me the odds, but I reckon I'm a good sight worse off'n one of those joggin' tofu eatin' hippie types. They already hadda go in and fix the old ticker once, it could go off again, any second. You get t'be my age, you start thinkin' 'bout it, just wait'n see." Ryan did not sound depressed, though-- if anything he seemed to have developed a grim sort of relish for the challenge of going toe-to-toe with cardiac arrest.

Pudge shook his head. "Always wit' the big overreaction. Always the drama. It wasn't never enough to throw a good game, it was always goin' for the no hitter wit' you, huh?" He smiled, not precisely at Ryan, more at Ryan's beer. Ryan smirked down at the table.

Silence came down between them again, but it was a more comfortable kind of silence now. Ryan seemed to be thinking about something, and Pudge was content to watch him. The longer they sat, the more obvious it was becoming that the Nolan Ryan he had known was still in there somewhere, under the face that retirement and age had bricked up around him. Pudge could still see him, sometimes, little flashes of light through chinks in a wall.

"For a while I thought I hated you," Ryan said. He nodded firmly to himself, very matter of fact. "Blamed you for, oh, all kindsa things. I'd lie up at night tellin' myself how much I hated you. Listed out reasons in my head and everythin'." He looked up, then, catching Pudge unawares, locking his gaze squarely onto Pudge's eyes. "But that was just somethin' I was tellin' myself. I never really did."

"Oh," Pudge said. "I know," he added, even though he hadn't known at all.

"I was an idiot, that's all. Veteran, you'd think I woulda known better by then, right? But I didn't know shit 'bout some things. Took me a while to think it through, and by the time I did… well." Ryan shrugged. "Way too late now." Pudge opened his mouth, a thousand protests on the tip of his tongue, but Ryan glared at him, a flash of the old pitcher in those eyes, and Pudge shut up fast. "Been sixteen years, Pudge, it's too late for lots of things. In lots of ways." He shook his head, mostly to himself, Pudge thought. Ryan slapped a hand gently on the tabletop. "But hey. I'm runnin' these Rangers, now, and I want you back with the ol' team."

The old team. Of course it wouldn't be the old team; never could be again. But the Rangers-- "Why?" It was all he could think to ask.

"We need a catcher. I need a catcher on my team. You're my catcher," Ryan said, like he hadn't just said all that other stuff. Like it was that simple.

But maybe-- just maybe-- it was. Pudge had been many things to many people, over the course of his career. He'd been a friend and a lover, a husband, a father, a teacher and a student. He'd been a leader and occasionally an instigator. He'd been an All Star and a Gold Glover and an MVP. A promising rookie and a well-versed veteran. He'd been an impossible ideal and a grave disappointment.

But through it all, he'd been a catcher. He'd been a catcher since he was a child in Puerto Rico, too short to reach the kitchen table without standing on a chair, since he'd played his first game of catch behind the old house, his father holding up a brand new baseball, shiny and white with the red stitches all pristine, and it had been the most perfect thing Pudge had ever seen. He had wanted nothing more than to catch that ball. And he'd never stopped.

"We've got your old number set aside for you and everythin'," Ryan said. "I even got-- don't even start wit' me, OK, but I thought-- I got one of our hats here…" He reached down and took something out of a bag by his seat, putting it on the scarred-up table. It was a Rangers hat, the classic bright blue, the block white T with its two little diamond extrusions, outlined in red. It was brand new, the brim still flat as the day it had been manufactured. Ryan pushed it across the table with just the tips of his fingers, looking away, very slightly embarrassed. "Come on home."

Pudge stared at the hat, resting there between them like some kind of royal blue metaphor that he could not decipher. After a moment he reached out, over the hat, to where Ryan's hand still lay on the table.

Ryan drew back ever so slightly. He didn't remove his hand from the table, and he didn't say anything; it was a tiny, minute movement, but Pudge was, after all, a catcher, and he knew perfectly well how to read the tiniest motions of his pitchers.

He sat back, picked up the hat and turned it around until he had the brim firm between his palms. He crushed it inwards, snapping the paperboard, then curved his hands to mold it, starting the long process that would eventually form the brim into exactly the right parabolic shape. He'd had plenty of new hats over the course of his career, but it didn't matter; give him enough time with them, and they all broke in the same.

"I'll come back to Texas. To the Rangers," he said. "But you need to understand. I'm playing ball. I'm already home."

 **epilogue-- 2022**

The night before, they closed the Hall to the public and let the inductees and their families in by themselves. One last chance to commune with the greats of yesteryear before taking their place among them, or something like that, Pudge figured. The last time he had been to Cooperstown, he'd been barely out of rookiehood; he and Rogers had road-tripped out one winter, just to see what all the hype was about.

//They've got a movie thing upstairs, Dad, it's starting in ten. You wanna come up?//

//You go ahead,// Pudge said. Dereck paused, indecisive, and Pudge waved him off. //Go on, take Ivanna before she gets bored down here. I don't need you two babysitting me all week, you know.//

//Alright, alright.// Dereck clapped him on the shoulder and went up to Ivanna, indelicately extracting her from a conversation with a ridiculously attractive young woman. Ivanna said something angrily to Dereck-- Pudge could read her mood even as they walked away from him and up the stairs-- and the girl looked after her in a wistful kind of way that made him grin. Then her father walked over, drawing her away to look at one of the exhibits. Pudge winced. It didn't matter how pretty Natasha Rodriguez had grown up to be; he was going to have to have words with Ivanna about flirting with A-Rod's little girl.

He wandered into the Hall itself, that great vaulted room of pale wood walls lined with plaques in varying stages of tarnishing bronze. Everyone else was clustering around the newer plaques, exclaiming over the likenesses of guys they knew, so he strolled down to the far end, where they had the very first class set apart from the rest.

Nineteen thirty-six. His _parents_ hadn't even been born yet. He read the few lines embossed on each plaque, although he knew the names by heart: Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb.

He knew the first catcher to be inducted into the Hall of Fame: Buck Ewing, in 1939. There followed thirty-four years before the first Latino player was inducted, the name that every Latino ballplayer who came after knew as well as he knew his own: Roberto Clemente. He had died on the very last day of 1972 and was inducted by special election early in 1973. Pudge had not even been two years old. But as soon as he had understood that baseball might exist outside of his backyard, he had known about Clemente. There was no such thing as a Puerto Rican who didn't.

The other inductees and their families started to filter into the older areas of the Hall. He moved into the newer section, nodding silently at the others as he passed, not really interested in conversation. He was starting to see the names of men his father had followed, then the names he had grown up watching, and finally the names of men who had stared at him from across the field: Wade Boggs and Kirby Puckett, George Brett and Dave Winfield.

He stopped in front of the Class of '99. Twenty-three years ago, and he could remember it as clearly as yesterday, that induction year and what it had meant.

Ryan's plague was not a great likeness-- the eyes far too empty, the sculpting of his cheeks not nearly as arresting as they had been in the original. He was listed by his full name, Lynn Nolan Ryan Jr, although so far as Pudge knew nobody in the world had ever called him 'Lynn' or 'Junior'.

 _A fierce competitor and one of baseball's most intimidating figures on the pitching mound for four decades, his overpowering fastball and unparalleled longevity produced 324 victories and a host of Major League records. Lifetime benchmarks include 5,714 strikeouts, seven no-hitters and 12 one-hitters in 27 seasons pitched. Led league in strikeouts 11 times and fanned 300 batters in a season on six occasions, including a record 383 in 1973. Strikeout victims totaled 1,176 different players. A Texas legend whose widespread popularity extended far beyond his native state._

Visitors were probably not supposed to touch the plaques, but he very much doubted that anyone was going to yell at him. And-- just this once-- he did not care what any of the other guys looking at him might think. Let them draw whatever conclusions they wanted to draw.

He reached out his right hand, the one he had used to signal pitches, and trailed it gently over the bas-relief brass features of Ryan's face, forever frozen, with whatever level of relative accuracy, in the time just before Pudge had first known him. The metal was cold under his fingertips. Well, he hadn't really been expecting anything else.

He pressed the pad of his thumb briefly into the block T on Ryan's hat before walking away, taking the white negative impression of it away with him, just for a little while, before it faded.

**

The outdoor stage they had set up for the induction ceremony had only a few steps on the side, but they had included a railing anyways. Pudge ascended slowly, gripping the rail hard. He didn't normally have to be _quite_ so careful, but he'd be damned if he was going to let his knees take him down in front of everyone, on this of all days.

When he reached the podium he set down the single page on which he had scrawled his speech notes and carefully gripped its sides, the wooden edges rounded from the grasps of a hundred old ballplayers who had stood there before. He was trying to not hyperventilate. Being the focus of large crowds was nothing new, of course, but nothing he had done had prepared him for this. It was less stressful than a World Series game, there was much less at stake, far fewer ways in which he personally could screw things up, he got that, he really did, but at least on a ballfield he knew what he was doing. In some ways this was far more harrowing.

The two World Series rings on his right hand glittered ferociously when the sun hit them, throwing shards of diamond-white light into the faces of the people in the first row. When he tensed his fingers around the edge of the podium, he could feel the metal bite into his fingers a little. This was real; this was really happening.

He knew what he would see when he looked out into the crowd. Former inductees, the ones who were still alive and still mobile enough to make the trip, some of their heads still dark, most gray or white. Other old ballplayers too, friends of his and friends of his fellow inductees, guys who'd been good but not quite good enough for this. Rogers, long since retired, would be there. Dereck and Ivanna would be there, 30 and 22 years old, taking time off from work and school; an imaginary hole where Amanda and Maribel should have been. There would be reporters, holding up their little iCapture recording sticks; photographers kneeling in the front and along the sides, jockeying for position, popping flashes despite the sun. The Commissioner would be there, and a number of the majority team owners, and representatives from the umpires' union.

If he looked far enough back, he might even see the crowd of fans, baseball pilgrims who came from all over the country to this sleepy little town, traveling by plane and train and eventually by car, because that last was the only way to get out to Cooperstown, in the end. It was a quiet kind of place, where nothing of note happened that didn't have to do with baseball, and all those people came, just to stand and watch another year of history being written.

There was a banner, he knew, affixed to the brick front of the building behind him. _Welcome to the National Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2022_.

He caught his breath, and looked up.


End file.
